Reputation Management

Most of us who live and work in the Real World barely have time to read email, let alone think of the Internet as having any serious impact on us. After all, that’s all just electronic, virtual reality. We operate in the tangible, corporeal world, right? Don’t be too sure about that. Many aspects of a physician’s career are intangible. The education, for example, is just represented by that piece of paper on the wall. The education itself is an intangible. One’s reputation is another essential, intangible asset. But with the Internet, your reputation (far more so than an education) has the potential to be in a constant state of flux. Even if you have 20 people saying how wonderful you are for every one person who claims you’re a quack, it’s still that one bad comment that is going to get the attention and ruin your reputation. It really should be expected, because the content patient doesn’t make it their life’s work to discredit you with their allegations. Remember, an allegation is all it takes. People think “Where there’s smoke, there must be some sort of fire,” so they move on a physician who may be nowhere near as highly experienced as you, but who also hasn’t had the chance to rack up any bad feedback yet. So you get the bad rep, and the new guy gets the patient.

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