Pharmacy student professionalism and the internet

Abstract User modifiable internet applications, often termed Web 2.0 and social media have the ability to quickly broadcast opinions, beliefs, and personal details. Pharmacy education has begun to integrate this technology for educational and outreach purposes and is also grappling with the negative issues that surface with respect to student professionalism. The objective was to investigate academic administrators' reports of unprofessional online postings of pharmacy students and how this related to policies at their respective institutions. This study was an online survey of Deans of student affairs, or their proxies, at United States colleges of pharmacy in December 2009. The survey collected information on school setting and respondent characteristics, incidents of student-posted unprofessional content, respondents' level of concern and institutional policies. Fifty-four percent of schools responded (60/111). Of these, 51% (31/60) reported incidences of student-posted online unprofessional content. Patient confidentiality was involved in 7% of these incidents (2/28). Profanity (74%; 20/27), discriminatory language (39%; 11/28), depicting intoxication (50%; 13/26), and sexually suggestive content (32%; 8/25) were also reported. Of the respondents who reported incidents and answered the question regarding disciplinary actions, 20 resulted in informal warnings (67%). Fifty-six percent of respondents believe that current policies do not cover student-posted online content (32/57). Of these schools without policies, 25% (9/32) were adjusting policies to cover this issue. There was no difference between schools reporting incidents and amount of policies, school characteristics, or Deans' level of concern. Online student-posted unprofessional content appears equally prevalent regardless of schools' policies to address it.