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Aim: To compare e-professionalism perceptions between medical and dental students, focusing on their awareness and understanding of guidelines for developing e-professionalism., Methods: A cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine (UZSM) and School of Dental Medicine (UZSDM) in 2022/2023. Data were gathered through a questionnaire designed specifically for the survey., Results: Of the 646 questionnaires collected, 626 were analyzed, with a response rate of 33.95% for UZSM and 37.83% for UZSDM. Most respondents (71.4%) were female, with a median age of 21. Medical students significantly more frequently considered it unprofessional to publish posts containing photos of patients/clients (96.5% vs 75.1%), endorsements of health products without conflict-of-interest disclosures (60.6% vs 33.0%), and posts describing patient interactions without revealing identifying information (51.7% vs 27.4%). In contrast, dental medicine students more frequently considered it unprofessional to publish posts with swearing or foul language (81.2% vs 67.4%), critical comments about lecturers (68.0% vs 46.9%), and criticisms of course material or the institution (52.3% vs 36.4%). Only 23.2% of students were aware of e-professionalism guidelines, with 37.9% of those familiar with their content., Conclusion: While medical and dental students recognize the importance of e-professionalism, their perceptions have substantial differences. The need for promoting existing guidelines and integrating e-professionalism into curricula is evident. Continuous monitoring and research in this domain are essential to ensure future health care professionals maintain high standards of online professionalism.

Background: Social media permeated everyday life and consequently it brought some changes to behaviour of health professionals. New form of professionalism emerged called e-professionalism depicting professional behaviour while using social media. There are a number of studies conducted in the past several years measuring behaviour of different populations of health professionals on social media and social media sites. Many studies have investigated aspects of e-professionalism of medical or dental students as future health professionals, but there are no validated instruments made for assessing attitude towards e-professionalism of those two populations. Objective of this paper is to validate a newly developed scale for measuring attitudes towards e-professionalism among medical and dental students., Methods: The original 32-item scale was developed and administered to 411 medical students (RR 69%), and 287 dental students (RR 49.7%). Exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate the existence of underlying factors. Principal component analysis was used as an extraction method with oblimin as selected oblique rotation method. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess reliability., Results: Total of 698 student answers entered analysis. The final scale had 24 items that formed seven factors named: ethical aspects, dangers of social media, excluding physicians, freedom of choice, importance of professionalism, physicians in the digital age, negative consequences. Cronbach's alpha indicating scale reliability was .72. Reliability conducted on each factor ranged from .570 to .877., Conclusions: The scale measures seven factors of attitude towards e-professionalism and exhibits satisfactory reliability. Based on insights from validation, some possible improvements are suggested., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Background: Social media presence among health care professionals is ubiquitous and largely beneficial for their personal and professional lives. New standards are forming in the context of e-professionalism, which are loosening the predefined older and offline terms. With these benefits also come dangers, with exposure to evaluation on all levels from peers, superiors, and the public, as witnessed in the #medbikini movement. Objective: The objectives of this study were to develop an improved coding scheme (SMePROF coding scheme) for the assessment of unprofessional behavior on Facebook of medical or dental students and faculty, compare reliability between coding schemes used in previous research and SMePROF coding scheme, compare gender-based differences for the assessment of the professional content on Facebook, validate the SMePROF coding scheme, and assess the level of and to characterize web-based professionalism on publicly available Facebook profiles of medical or dental students and faculty. Methods: A search was performed via a new Facebook account using a systematic probabilistic sample of students and faculty in the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. Each profile was subsequently assessed with regard to professionalism based on previously published criteria and compared using the SMePROF coding scheme developed for this study. Results: Intercoder reliability increased when the SMePROF coding scheme was used for the comparison of gender-based coding results. Results showed an increase in the gender-based agreement of the final codes for the category professionalism, from 85% in the first phase to 96.2% in the second phase. Final results of the second phase showed that there was almost no difference between female and male coders for coding potentially unprofessional content for students (7/240, 2.9% vs 5/203, 2.5%) or for coding unprofessional content for students (11/240, 4.6% vs 11/203, 5.4%). Comparison of definitive results between the first and second phases indicated an understanding of web-based professionalism, with unprofessional content being very low, both for students (9/222, 4.1% vs 12/206, 5.8%) and faculty (1/25, 4% vs 0/23, 0%). For assessment of the potentially unprofessional content, we observed a 4-fold decrease, using the SMePROF rubric, for students (26/222, 11.7% to 6/206, 2.9%) and a 5-fold decrease for faculty (6/25, 24% to 1/23, 4%). Conclusions: SMePROF coding scheme for assessing professionalism of health-care professionals on Facebook is a validated and more objective instrument. This research emphasizes the role that context plays in the perception of unprofessional and potentially unprofessional content and provides insight into the existence of different sets of rules for web-based and offline interaction that marks behavior as unprofessional. The level of e-professionalism on Facebook profiles of medical or dental students and faculty available for public viewing has shown a high level of understanding of e-professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Social media (SM) is part of everyday communication. Professional behavior of healthcare professionals is more exposed to evaluation through these online services. This research aimed to examine the effects of an educational intervention (one-semester elective course) on the perception of unprofessional content on SM among students of medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and dental medicine at the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Zagreb. Materials and methods: A "one-group pretest-posttest design" study design was used. An online questionnaire containing an instrument on the perception of unprofessional content was distributed at the beginning (T1) and end of the course (T2). McNemar's test with Bonferroni correction was used for statistical analysis of differences in the perception of unprofessional content on SM between T1 and T2. Results: A total of 68 responses were collected. The questionnaire was filled out just at T1 by eight, just at T2 by seven, and both times by 53 students. The sample was predominantly female (79.2%), with an average age of 20 years, and with more dental medicine students (69.8%). One respondent claimed no SM use. Of the 19 items in the instrument, "minor criminal activities" (98.1%), "posts that reveal information about patients" (98.1%), "posts that include explicit sexual content" (96.2%), and "posts that show drug use" (96.2%) were finally (T2) rated as the most unprofessional. Although statistically significant differences in increased perception of unprofessional content on SM at the end of the course compared to the beginning were found in the initial analysis, with Bonferroni correction, there were no statistically significant differences. Conclusion: The perception of unprofessional content among medicine and dental medicine students is high. Although the educational intervention did not lead to statistically significant changes in increasing the perception of professional content, it strengthened the understanding of the concept of professionalism on SM among students. This study is part of a project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation UIP-05-2017 "Dangers and benefits of social networks: E-Professionalism of healthcare professionals - SMePROF". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]