Would you post clinical content online? Where's the line for you?

Professional judgment applied to a genuinely gray area, plus your grasp of consent and privacy.

Written by Victoria Young, DDS · NYU College of Dentistry '24 · Penn Dental Medicine

The trap

Focusing only on whether it's legal. The stronger frame is whether a patient would feel respected — and any answer that treats patients as content is a serious professionalism flag.

How to structure your answer

State your position → the rules that constrain it → the specific line you'd draw → the reasoning behind that line.

Written, specific, revocable patient consent for any identifiable image — a signed general form is not enough
Distinguish education from advertising from entertainment
Name what you'd never post: identifiable minors, anything mocking a patient, staged or misleading results
Consider how a patient in your chair would feel seeing it

A weak answer

What most people say

I'd be careful with it. I wouldn't post anything that violates HIPAA, and I'd make sure I had consent from the patient before anything went up. As long as it's legal and they've signed off, I don't really see a problem with sharing cases. A lot of that content is genuinely educational and patients seem to find it interesting.

Stops at legal, and treats one signature as if it were the whole of consent.

A stronger answer

What lands

I shot photos for a nonprofit for four years, so consent is the piece I have opinions about. The intake form everyone signs isn't consent. Consent is showing the person the actual image, telling them exactly where it's going, and telling them they can pull it later and I'll take it down. Written, specific, revocable. My line is that education is fine, advertising has to be labeled as advertising, and a patient is never the punchline. No identifiable minors at all. The test I use is whether they'd feel proud or exposed seeing it while sitting in my chair.

Separates a signed form from real consent, and judges it by how the patient would feel.

Legal is the floor. She's answering the harder question, which is whether the person in the photo feels respected.

These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.

Reading it isn't the same as saying it.

Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.

Try one interview free Get the guide