Proposed social media rules for public hospital doctors are an attack on their freedom of speech and will undermine their efforts to improve working conditions, MP Dr Amanda Cohn says.

Draft NSW Health rules state that doctors’ posts on personal social media accounts must reflect their responsibility to promote confidence in NSW Health.

They are part of a wider overhaul of social media rules for NSW public workers, which would bring the rules for hospital doctors closer to those for other public employees.

But Dr Cohn, a former GP, says the department has overreached by drawing up rules that would stop doctors criticising it.