My mother and father are both physicians. After our most recent class where we discussed physician reviews by laymen (i.e. non technical analysis) I spoke to my parents about this subject. They both reacted with a lot of emotion which in some sense surprised me and yet after reflection should have been expected.
My mother, a well known cardiologist, has a number of these reviews online by patients. She refuses to review anything online and tries to shut herself out from it. Although initially I was taken aback by this approach I trust you will not find it surprising by the end of this post.
My father said that as a good doctor you are of course driven to help people and to work as hard as you can to achieve this goal. You don't want anything that can in some way hinder you from this motivation and he believes that online reviews are a huge issue. One - they can become addictive for a doctor and all of a sudden the doctor no longer is trying to "do well" but rather is overly focused on what others think. One bad review can destroy motivation to such an extreme extent.
I do not necessarily have a solution for this issue. And yes I told my mother that the younger doctors in her practice must have a strategy for these reviews because it will increasingly become a greater tool for the general public. But I do feel that physicians do need to take control of this process so that it does not spiral out of control. My parents views are more jaded in that respect.
Another good blog post:
http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/09/how-doctors-are-using-social-media/
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