With Scot Glasberg, MD

How should plastic surgeons use the ASPS social media guidelines?

So there are some basic elements to it. Consent of the patient is critical. Patients need to know and understand that you know there may be some of their identifiable information revealed in a video that gets placed on Snapchat. And you can understand that potentially they are gonna be asleep. And some surgeon is going to post on social media. Then we get into the next realm. What is it that we are showing on Snapchat and other social media form to patients and I? I think showing a procedure for educational purposes is fine. I think that showing results to patients sets their expectations in a real manner, and that’s really good for patients. Social media has really helped us, because it’s real time- and so you know, patients can see “I’m going to look like this when I come out of the operating room, I’m going to look like this maybe an hour post-operatively.” All of that’s fine.

What are some of the pitfalls of social media?

Where some surgeons, push the envelope and personally I’m not comfortable with is some of the singing and dancing that I’ve seen on some of social media outlets in the operating room when a patient is asleep I think there still needs to be a certain respect and again, professionalism, that’s put into these videos. The society has an ethics process where we review these types of cases on a case by case basis.