From the Editors’ Desk: What You Don’t Know Could Hurt You

Excerpt

An e-mail that would have usually been categorized as “junk” somehow managed to elude the university spam filter and made its way into my in-box; the subject line read: “What Doctors Need to Know About Facebook.” The e-mail was inviting me to participate in a webinar that promised the participants that, among other wonders, they would learn to use Facebook as a “valuable tool for sharing information with colleagues.” Really? As a late and somewhat reluctant adopter of Facebook, I have been unconvinced of its value for me personally or professionally, and have mainly ignored the many “friend” requests that somehow began showing up in my e-mail after I finally signed up a few months ago; some came from patients and their families, some from people whose names I barely recognized (none, alas, from long lost flames). …