Social media use, habits and attitudes toward e-professionalism among medicine and dental medicine students: a quantitative cross-sectional study

AIM: To describe and compare social media (SM) use and habits, and attitudes of medical and dental students toward e-professionalism and to determine their opinion on potentially unprofessional behavior and posts. METHODS: In this quantitative cross-sectional questionnaire study, students of the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and those of the School of Dental Medicine completed a survey-specific questionnaire on the use of SM, SM habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism. RESULTS: Of the 714 collected questionnaires, we analyzed 698 (411 from medical and 287 from dental students). The most commonly used SM were Facebook (99%) and Instagram (80.7%). Unprofessional content was recognized by both groups. Medical students significantly more frequently considered the posts containing patient photos (61% vs 89.8%; P < 0.001), describing interaction with a patient not revealing any personal identifiable information (23% vs 41.8%; P < 0.001), and containing critical comments about faculty (53% vs 39.7%; P = 0.001) to be unprofessional. Dental medicine students were significantly more open to communication through SM (39.7% vs 16.3%; P < 0.001), more often reported that they would accept (41.5% vs 12.2%; P < 0.001), and had accepted (28.2% vs 5.6%; P < 0.001) friend requests/follows/tracks from patients, and sent friend requests/follows/tracks to their patients (5.2% vs 1.2%; P = 0.002). CONCLUSION: Both groups were highly aware of e-professionalism. Dental students were more desensitized to visual representations of patients, and more prone to SM interactions with patients, which might expose them to the risk of unprofessional behavior.