The confidential and professional doctor-patient relationship is under threat from social networking site Facebook, it has been claimed.

A French study of more than 400 trainee doctors found 73% had a profile on the site and most of these displayed enough personal information to be identified by patients and other members of the public.

Information that could easily be accessed included their name and date of birth and 91% had also provided a photo of themselves.

The study by Rouen University Hospital, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, found 6% of doctors had received a Facebook request from a patient and only four had accepted the request.

But the study`s authors said such requests are very likely to become more common.

While most doctors (85%) said they would automatically refuse a friend request from a patient, one in seven (15%) said they would decide on a case-by-case basis.

But the authors said: "This new interaction (whether it is romantic or not) results in an ethically problematic situation because it is unrelated to direct patient care.

"Moreover public availability of information on a doctor`s private life may threaten the mutual confidence between doctor and patient if the patient accesses information not intended for them."

More than half (55%) of doctors in the study had provided information on their current job title and 59% provided details of university medical training.

Some 61% thought they had changed their privacy settings to prevent people seeing most of their details but 17% could not remember exactly.

Doctors who had been on Facebook for less than a year were less likely to limit access to the content of their profile.

Copyright ⌐ Press Association 2010