Professionalism and Social Media

            Professionalism and Social Media

The use of social media can have a considerable impact on the health of nurses both in the working environment and on an individual level. Both negative and positive outcomes come as a result of using social media for nurses, particularly concerning health implications. Some of the posts and conversations personally that I have had an encounter with, especially on Facebook and Instagram is in the incidence of the perpetuation of negative societal patterns of behavior in the shared information. Most people are unaware of the social media impact on their feeling of identity (Westrick, 2016). A good example that I had an encounter with is the incidence of some individuals posting pictures of obese individuals and making fun of how they look. Concerning the standards of nursing ridiculing along with making fun of people that are in health conditions such as obese individuals in totally unethical since it violates the ethical principals of healthcare such as nonmaleficence which means to not harm and in this case, the patient sense of identity gets damaged in social media.

Nurses have a great responsibility of maintaining the required standards of nursing practice in their lives and the workplace. Nurses are the critical health providers as their central role in the healthcare environment that the lives of the patients lie in their hands. In the professional nursing experience, they are expected to undertake several tasks and be responsible over different patients simultaneously while upholding the required standard regulating the nursing profession and the facility they work in (Duke et al., 2017). Furthermore, the nurses in their individual lives are healthcare providers towards their families as they also have to balance the responsibilities they have at home.

The utilization of social media, along with other means of electronic communication, is increasing rapidly with the continuous emergence of different social media channels, applications, and platforms. Social media is a useful and captivating tool on occasions it is widely used. Nevertheless, social media may involve other unprecedented repercussions because it provides prompt opportunities of posting in the platforms that enable inadequate time for individuals to think about the posts they are sharing on the internet which may have some implications towards their lives since they are capable of being found out long after being deleted in a court of law. An excellent example of unprofessional nursing conduct in the utilization of social media is when a nurse breaches patients’ confidentiality. This could be through posting pictures of patients in the hospital or disclosing the personal information to the public through social media (Mohamed, 2018).

After checking most of my social media platforms, especially Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, I figured out that I posted some posts and comments which are likely to be taken into account as unethical in the standards set by the nursing profession as per Wolf, Joos, and Nelson (2019). According to one occasion, as a nurse in my night duty, I was feeling so overwhelmed by my patient’s health condition. I was feeling so lonely since I did not have other colleagues to interact with, and thus, social media was the only platform available for me to express how I felt about the situation. I posted that my patient was in a critical condition, and anybody that was in a position to help in supporting the patient financially or through prayers, I would be grateful as it was the least I could do to help in that instance.

On a personal level, there are areas I need to concerning social media activity. Some of the areas involve increasing my awareness of how social media works, and it can positively impact healthcare.  Another area I also need to improve is to learn more about minimizing the associated risks of participating in social media through the utilization of health-related applications.

References

Duke, V. J., Anstey, A., Carter, S., Gosse, N., Hutchens, K. M., & Marsh, J. A. (2017). Social media in nurse education: Utilization and E-professionalism. Nurse Education Today, 57, 8-13.

Joos, I., Nelson, R., & Wolf, D. (2019). Introduction to Computers for Health Care Professionals. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Mohamed, S. (2018). The Use of Social Media in the Nursing Profession.

Westrick, S. J. (2016). Nursing students’ use of electronic and social media: Law, ethics, and e-professionalism. Nursing education perspectives, 37(1), 16-22.