Personal identity is critical to provider--patient interactions. Patients and doctors tend to self-select, ideally forming therapeutic units that maximise the patients' benefit. Recently, however, 'reality' has changed. The internet and virtual worlds such as Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) allow models of identity and provider--patient interactions that go beyond the limits of mainstream personal identity. In this paper some of the ethical implications of virtual patient--provider interactions, especially those that have to do with personal identity, are explored.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 May 2012.
All research outputs
#13,286,646
of 22,665,794 outputs
Outputs from Medical Humanities
#524
of 641 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#78,631
of 105,887 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Medical Humanities
#6
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,665,794 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 641 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.5. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 105,887 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 25th percentile – i.e., 25% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 8 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 2 of them.
