Social Media and Nursing

Nurses are expected to maintain the highest professional standards at all times.

Nursing Unions and Organisations publish standards of practice and codes of ethics. Professional standards are taught and assessed from the first year of nursing education and nurses are expected to maintain these standards throughout their careers.

Does your workplace have guidelines around social media use?

1. Be careful about what you say and how you say it

Nurses have an ethical and legal responsibility to maintain their patients’ confidentiality. This still applies when using any form of online tool, regardless of whether the communication is with other nurses, friends on social networking sites, or a public blog. Before putting patient information online, or ANY information online, think about why you are doing it. In maintaining confidentiality, you must ensure that any patient or situation cannot be identified by the sum of information available online.

2. Keep your friends close and others … not so close (Nurse-patient boundaries or Employer-employee boundaries)

A power imbalance exists between nurses and patients, and the maintenance of clear professional boundaries protects patients from exploitation. Nurses who allow clients to access their entire ‘profile’ (or similar) introduce them to details about their personal lives well beyond what would normally occur as part of the usual nurse-patient relationship, which may be a violation of professional boundaries. In general, it is wise to avoid online relationships with current or former patients. Think very carefully before allowing others (including employers, other nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, clerks, ancillary staff, students, or tutors) to access personal information.

3. Consider the destiny of your data (Extent of access to your information)

Many people are unaware of just how easily accessible and durable their online information is. Even if using the most stringent privacy settings, information on social networking sites may still be widely available, including to various companies and search engines. And deleting information is not sure-fire protection – it is almost certainly still stored somewhere in cyberspace, and theoretically permanently accessible. If there is something that you really do not want some people to know about you, avoid putting it online at all.

4. Employee and student background checks (be conscious of your online image.)

Recruiters are increasingly screening potential employees online. Employer surveys have found that between one-fifth and two-thirds of employers conduct internet searches, including of social networking sites, and that some have turned down applicants as a result of their searches. In another survey, 21 per cent of colleges and universities said they looked at the social networking of prospective students, usually for those applying for scholarships and other awards and programs.

5. Take control of your privacy (Facebook’s privacy settings)

Most social networking sites or blogs will have privacy settings enabling you to control (to some extent) how accessible your material is. Facebook changes its privacy settings frequently, so be alert for these sorts of changes in the future.