The Impact of Social Media on the Quality of Doctor-Patient Interaction

Doctor-Patient Interaction (DPI) is a prerequisite for starting a therapeutic process. As this interaction plays a key role in all steps such a diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, the more efficient the DPI is, the more satisfied the patient is. From another standpoint, social media are conspicuously blending with different aspects of people's lives such as healthcare services. Social media provide people with the access to information and communication with other people across the world instantly. However, it is inevitable to face its downsides such as misleading information. This paper systematically reviews the influence of social media on DPI and patient's perceptions of the online information and discusses that DPI can be enhanced by using social media and public medical knowledge can be expanded by the dissemination of supervised information. These conclusions can be expected because people express concerns about the validity of the information, its sources, and their security in using social media, and therefore, they tend to put trust more in scientific-based information provided by doctors or healthcare providers rather than some random misleading information.