Assessment Description
Social media plays a significant role in the lives of nurses in both their professional and personal lives. Additionally, social media is now considered a mainstream part of the process for recruiting and hiring candidates. Inappropriate or unethical conduct on social media can create legal problems for nurses as well as the field of nursing.
Login to all social media sites in which you engage. Review your profile, pictures and posts. Based on the professional standards of nursing, identify items that would be considered unprofessional and potentially detrimental to your career and that negatively impact the reputation of the nursing field.
In 500-750 words, summarize the findings of your review. Include the following:
Describe the posts or conversations in which you have engaged that might be considered inappropriate based on the professional standards of nursing.
Discuss why nurses have a responsibility to uphold a standard of conduct consistent with the standards governing the profession of nursing at work and in their personal lives. Include discussion of how personal conduct can violate HIPAA or be considered unethical or unprofessional. Provide an example of each to support your answer.
Based on the analysis of your social media, discuss what areas of your social media activity reflect Christian values as they relate to respecting human value and dignity for all individuals. Describe areas of your social media activity that could be improved.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
Professionalism and Social Media
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Date
Professionalism and Social Media
Introduction
Nursing is an important profession in the healthcare industry that must operate within reasonable ethics to achieve the needs of patients. They must be cautious regarding how they treat others, interact with them, and share information (Chism, 2019). Social media is one of the areas where nurses should observe the highest level of moral and ethical behaviors. Several social media platforms are accessible to nurses, allowing them to connect with colleagues and the public. Social media has made the world a global village where people interact easily from the extreme ends. However, social media possess the potential risk of violation of patient confidentiality and privacy laws and harm to professional image, as well as legal and licensing issues (Edge, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues surrounding social media and nursing professionalism.
A post or a conversation that may be considered inappropriate based on nursing professional standards
After careful review of my social media platforms, I have noticed that I made a few posts on my Facebook page, that may be deemed professionally inappropriate. For instance, I had complained of long working hours and how that was annoying. I also complained about how working long hours made me exhausted and could easily lead to making medical mistakes. In another post, I complained about how some patients are annoying and discussed a situation that happened at the workplace. However, I did not mention the names of the patients or anyone involved in the scenario. The two posts might be inappropriate professionally because they tend to portray negatively the workplace (Edge, 2017). They also tend to disclose some occurrences at the workplace should be solved amicably with the employer.
Why do nurses have a responsibility to uphold a standard of conduct?
Nurses have a special role to play in upholding professional standards to improve patient care. Nurses spend most of their time with patients and build a stronger bond with them than physicians (Chism, 2019). Therefore, they are responsible to behave and practice professionally to ensure patients have positive experiences. Since nurses are the face of the organization, their activities on social media can have an adverse or positive impact on the entire organization. Nurses should uphold the professional standard of conduct because their behavior on social media will reflect on the whole professionalism of nurses and impact the influence the public has on nurses (Edge, 2017). Bad behavior might lead to job termination and permanent or temporary revocation of license. Personal conduct can violate the HIPAA privacy rule if the information that should be confidential is leaked to the public domain. Such personal conducts are unprofessional (HIPAA, 2018). For example, if a nurse posts a patient’s name and the diagnosis, the nurse would have breached the HIPAA privacy rule. Such information must be confidential unless otherwise.
Social media activity that reflects Christian values
My social media posts are dynamic, some reflect Christian values and others need slight improvement. Areas of social media activities that reflect Christian values include being empathetic with a valuable group of patients and encouraging the community to identify and help such individuals. I also provide the community with tips on leading healthy lifestyles to avoid chronic illnesses and related deaths (Chism, 2019). I help people with chronic diseases such as diabetes with lifestyle changes to improve their health. Above all, the posts always remind the masses that they should put God first regardless of their situations. Posts that need improvement include engaging in conversations with patients and posting activities that occur at the workplace.
Conclusion
Nurses perform most jobs in healthcare and spend most of their time with patients. The relationship between nurses and patients has significant impact on the outcomes. Nurses must use social media carefully to avoid unprofessionalism. Personal conducts such as sharing confidential information about patients lead to a breach of the HIPAA privacy rule.
References
Chism, L. (2019). The Doctor of Nursing Practice: A Guidebook for Role Development and Professional Issues. Jones & Bartlett Learning
Edge, W. (2017). Nursing professionalism: Impact of social media use among nursing students. Journal of Healthcare Communications, 2(3), 2472-1654. DOI: 10.4172/2472-1654.100068
HIPAA. (2018, Mar 12). HIPAA Social Media Rules. https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-social-media/