A Nurse’s Guide to the Use of Social Media
Privacy and confidentiality are must-haves for nursing professionals. It is required of a nurse to safeguard information learned about a patient in the course of treatment. Such information can only be disclosed to the team members in the facility whose work is to ensure that the patients get better (Milholland, 1994). This information can only be released when the patient gives informed consent.
Bob may have had the purest intention when sharing with William Claire’s photo. First, William was not working with Claire at the moment, and this was a breach of confidentiality as stipulated in the nurses’ guiding code. Also, the permission to take Claire’s photo was not well consented to because she had not allowed it. As unfair as it may seem for Bob to be terminated from his workplace, the violation could have been avoided by him had he thought it keenly against the set nursing standards on the use of social media.
Emily may have been young, vibrant, and with the purest of intentions when she posted Tommy’s photo on Facebook (NCSBN, 2011). Her intentions are pure from the message captured in the example. However, the procedure followed by her is a violation. Her work was to ensure that Tommy’s identity was kept a secret. She could have kept working in the nursing field had she kept the privacy and confidentiality set standards.
Jamie breached privacy and confidentiality on Maria’s post though she sent a message of hope to her. In the process, she disclosed Maria’s condition and the medicine that she was taking. Though Jamie was a practicing nurse for a long time, when her emotions set in, she breached the nurses guiding code on social media use, putting her on the spot.
