When I first started my nursing career we were warned never to talk about a patient and their details in an elevator or a public place. Later on I learned about the value of a therapeutic relationship where you keep your personal information private and focus on the patients needs and don't talk about them by name after work. Then in the States came the advent of HIPPA, where all information became protected and it was hard to even have a conversation on the phone with a colleague without the HIPPA Gods slamming on your head a $10,000 fine for infringement of privacy.
However, has nursing caught up with technology, especially in the world of social media? I think not, as nurses we have to be so careful as not only do we put our patients privacy in jeopardy but also our jobs. Just about everyone has a camera on their smart phone, which are also connected to twitter, facebook, instagram and other social networking sites. Information and pictures are uploaded in real time and even if you take down a picture or a post it can live on in Internet land. This is rocky ground for nurses who have become accustomed and enjoy the daily connection that an online community bring. I am one of those people, now the owner of two blogs, a business website, two facebook pages, a daily instagram habit I consider myself pretty connected, it fills a need and builds my business and it has been a wonderful addition to my daily life. This is not a commentary on why social media is bad, it is a caution on how are frequent and unedited posting habits can detrimentally affect the lives of our patients and our livelihoods. We need to have a filter people, a very strong one!
It is common place to post about a bad day, a good day, a difficult experience but you cannot have any patient or institutional content in there that may be traced back to an individual or place of employment. Taking pictures of patients and posting them, especially children is a huge no-no, they cannot give consent, its unfair to ask them and your employer will be hopping mad if they find out.
I recently posted a couple of pictures of my students at the end of semester in the clinical environment and I am double thinking that move. As a person who has a position of authority over my students it was probably unfair to take and post picture of them as it is difficult for them to decline (who wants to tick off the person who is writing your evaluation even if you have a good perceived relationship with them).
So, after doing some research on nurses and social media I am rethinking my personal code of ethics on the whole thing and will emphasize much stronger with my students what they can and cannot do regarding their clinical experience and social media, and unfortunately there is a whole lot more cannot than can.
Undoubtedly we need more education for employers and employees on this issue. We need support and not blame but all health care professionals need to know the consequences if we stray.
There is so much to say on this topic and I could go on and on but then I would bore you (maybe more than you are already) so lets talk about this again.......next week!
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