'Doctors can't be doctors all of the time': a qualitative study of how general practitioners and medical students negotiate public-professional and private-personal realms using social media

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study is to explore the experiences and perspectives of general practitioners' and medical students' use of, and behaviour on, social media and to understand how they negotiate threats to professional and personal life on social media.

DESIGN

A two-phase qualitative design was used, consisting of semistructured interviews and follow-up vignettes, where participants were asked to respond to vignettes that involved varying degrees of unprofessional behaviour. Data were analysed using template analysis.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Participants were general practitioner tutors and third year medical students who had just completed placement on the University of Limerick longitudinal integrated clerkship. Five students and three general practitioners affiliated with the medical school were invited to participate in one-to-one interviews.

RESULTS

Three overarching themes, each containing subthemes were reported. 'Staying in contact and up to date' outlines how social media platforms provide useful resources and illustrates the potential risks of social media. 'Online persona' considers how social media has contributed to changing the nature of interpersonal relationships. 'Towards standards and safety' raises the matter of how to protect patients, doctors and the medical profession.

CONCLUSION

Guidance is required for students and medical practitioners on how to establish reasonable boundaries between their personal and professional presence on social media and in their private life so that poorly judged use of social media does not negatively affect career prospects and professional efficacy.

What’s love got to do with it? Employee engagement amongst higher education workers

Employee engagement is an important construct in management research as engaged employees not only perform better in their jobs but also feel happier and more fulfilled in the workplace. Employee engagement is a function of the job resources employees have in coping with their job demands. This paper makes a threefold contribution to the existing engagement literature by: (1) exploring this construct with a sample of third-level academics in the Irish public sector – a relatively unmapped sample in engagement research, (2) identifying organisational support as a key job resource that enables academics to cope with their job demands and (3) proposing that employee engagement reflects how strongly an employee puts his or her heart into work – suggesting a reconceptualization of engagement as love. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.