Patients on social media cause ethics headache for doctors

(Reuters) – As more and more sick patients are going online and using social media to search for answers about their health, it’s raising a lot of thorny ethical questions for doctors.
“The internet and ready access to vast amounts of information are now permanent aspects of how we live our lives, including how we think about and deal with our health problems,” Dr. Chris Feudtner, director of medical ethics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said by email.