Personal Branding Via Social Media: Benefits and Risks in The Eyes of Polish Medical Doctors

In medical circles, personal branding is important both from the point of view of doctors and patients - and here social media, with its accessibility and scope, can be a useful tool. The paper aims to provide an answer to the following research questions: Do medical doctors have a sense of being a brand, do they consider social media to be an appropriate tool for professional personal branding, and what benefits and risks do they perceive in social media in this regard? The presented diagnostic survey was carried out among 81 Polish medical doctors. The results show that a significant number of doctors who participated in the survey uses social media and considers it to be a good personal branding platform. Still, not many of them has accounts related to their profession. One of the reasons is that over half of the respondents do not see themselves as a brand, which results in a lack of conscious branding policy. Other reasons include risks associated with the use of social media, among which the respondents most often pointed to: loss of privacy, receiving judgemental posts about their private life, receiving requests for medical advice, and ethical dilemmas concerning doctor advertising.