Twitter fuelling ‘vitriolic’ abuse of GPS, claims medical leader

DOCTORS should limit their use of social media to avoid attacks by angry patients, one of the profession’s leaders has warned.

Dr Clare Gerada, former chairman of the Royal College of GPS, said younger doctors in particular were increasingly subject to online “vitriol” and “hate”.

Now medical director of the NHS Practitioner Health Programme, a service to support under-pressure staff, Dr Gerada told The Daily Telegraph that doctors should take themselves off social media for periods in order to protect their mental health.

She added that the rise in online abuse was contributing to an “increasingly cruel” working atmosphere for young clinicians, which had driven a doubling in the number calling a confidential helpline.

Dr Gerada, who has 42,700 followers on Twitter, said many of the negative comments came from informal online networks strongly opposed to certain medical practices, such as prescribing antidepressants, in response to tweets or posts made by doctors.

She warned that practitioners could also be the subject of criticism from patients who followed their accounts.

“Twitter is a place where people sit waiting to be offended and doctors are more likely to tweet things that people will get upset about,” she said.

“I am very mindful of patients on social media. I will sometimes take myself off social media for a week because people have upset me and it hurts.”

Dr Gerada said online abuse was exacerbating a working environment made difficult by an increased risk of litigation and disciplinary action compared to that faced by previous generations of junior doctors.