A recent UF study suggests that medical students should take up a "private" practice and conceal personal information on their Facebook profiles.
Some UF medical students lack discretion on the social Web site, and patients and future employers may not find their collegiate antics acceptable, according to the study.
From a pool of 800 UF medical students and residents, 44 percent had Facebook profiles.
Only a third of the students who were studied kept their profiles private.
Dr. Lindsay Acheson Thompson, an assistant professor at UF's College of Medicine and one of the researchers, said she was disturbed by some of the photographs that the students posted for public viewing.
When 10 profiles were randomly selected, researchers found that half of them contained photographs showing the students drinking alcohol excessively.
Three belonged to groups with sexist or racially charged names, such as "Physicians looking for trophy wives in training" or "I should have gone to a blacker college," according to a UF news release.
Thompson was interested in studying how medical students maintain their identity on the site after a similar study was conducted on elementary education students in UF's College of Education.
She said she is worried that students are not aware of the consequences of having their actions on a public record.
Nothing ever disappears on the Internet, she said.
Students should make their profiles private and be confident with what details they choose to post, Thompson said.
Saad Mir, second-year UF medical student, said he chose to keep his Facebook profile private to be safe.
Mir said he isn't surprised by the study's recommendations because medical students should be mature and professional, even in their personal lives.
"We're supposed to be model citizens 24/7," he said, "and that's expected of us."
