The seven that carry professional risk
An identifiable patient without written consent. A guaranteed result. A claim about qualifications you cannot evidence. A diagnosis given to a person in public or in a DM. A named criticism of another clinician. Before-and-after imagery without consent or outside what the platform and regulator allow. A treatment claim ahead of the evidence.
Each of these can become a complaint, and complaints in medicine are not marketing problems — they are licensing ones. The value of a written list is that it removes the judgement call at 11pm, which is when every one of these gets posted.
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The eight that just cost you credibility
Superlatives about yourself. Countdown discounts on surgery. Fear-led hooks about appearance. Trends that require you to dance in scrubs. Reposted health facts with no source. Screenshots of praise. Political and religious commentary. And the passive-aggressive post about a difficult patient, which every colleague recognises and no patient forgets.
None of these will end a career. All of them make a serious patient less likely to trust the next clinical thing you say, which is a slower and more expensive kind of damage.
The rule that prevents most of them
Nothing goes out within an hour of writing it, and nothing clinical goes out without a second pair of eyes. Two mechanical rules, no judgement required, and between them they catch almost every post on this list.
Print the fifteen and put them where the content actually gets scheduled — not in a document nobody opens. The list works as a wall, not as a policy.