Doctors in Europe have been warned not to respond to flirtatious approaches from patients on social networking sites like Facebook. The United Kingdom's Medical Defence Union said it was aware of a number of cases where patients have attempted to proposition doctors by sending them an unsolicited message on Facebook or similar sites. The medical body said it would be "wholly inappropriate" to respond to a patient making an advance in such a way. A legal adivsor for the Defence Union said the pitfalls posed to doctors using social networking sites and inadvertently breaching patient confidentiality had already been well documented, but the dangers of patients using the sites to approach doctors were less well publicized.
