Social Media Adoption Essay

While advancements in technology have positively impacted the nursing field, it has also created huge concerns with patient privacy and sharing of protected health information leading to detrimental effects to patients and their families. Indeed, technology is changing the face of healthcare with positive innovations to reduce medication errors and documentation errors. However, technology at our fingertips has created immense concerns with sharing of protected health information of patients via social media, email and other means of communication via technology. This paper addresses why I feel the advancement of technology has numerous deficits that need more research and implementation of new laws and policies to safeguard the

Communication has been permanently changed by social media. A wide conceptual definition of social media, as cited in Ressler & Glazer (2010), is “The online and mobile accessible services that enable individuals to connect, collaborate, and share with others in real time.” Social media has an obvious influence on informal communication style and represents both possibility and liability for healthcare institutions. As cited in Bernhardt, Alber, & Gold (2014), “Social media provide healthcare professionals with tools to share information, to debate health care policy and practice issues, to promote health behaviors, to engage with the public, and to educate and interact with patients, caregivers, students, and colleagues.” It also presents challenges, including risks to information accuracy, organizational reputation, and individual privacy. Social media can be a very helpful in communicating among nurses and other healthcare providers while creating professional connections, and sharing experiences, but guidelines for appropriate use by healthcare providers are essential. Whether or not certain healthcare organization decides to use social media as a communications tool - social media policy still need to be implemented. Policies help establish an organization 's rules and expectations around social media.

We Can But Dare We: A Look into the Use of Social Media in Healthcare

This report is intended to be presented to senior management within the NHS. It evaluates the challenges that NHS Choices is facing with its current social media adoption or use and does so through an evaluation of two social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter. The selection of these two specific social media platforms is driven by the popularity of Facebook and Twitter with the UK population. In an Ofcom report published in 2014, 96% of online adults used Facebook as their default social networking site closely followed by Twitter (Ofcom, 2014). It is important therefore to evaluate how NHS Direct can utilise social media to effectively communicate with the UK population. This report is divided into two subsequent parts. Part II evaluates the challenges that NHS Choices currently face with regards to its current adoption. Part III builds on this analysis by advising how NHS Choices can effectively use social media to improve the services provided to patients.

Employees within healthcare and anyone who has been a mature patient in recent years have been duly informed of the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA), but even more people are more intimately familiar with the social networking site Facebook. Prior to researching the legal and ethical boundaries at it pertains to patient confidentiality in nursing school, many of us thought little of the HIPPA concept and how it applies to each of us as individuals. We can announce to the world on Facebook that I have a lump, please go get a mammogram! We can whine on for ages about our children’s medical problems. We make announcements and call for prayers for our spouses and parents who are ill. We share with our friends and family,

Social media (digital technology) platforms are defined as any form of digital communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos). Over the last several years, the use of social media platforms such as blogs, text messaging, games, and Twitter, have had significant growth. Social media tools have become an effective way to expand reach, foster engagement and increase access to credible, evidence-based health information.

Another drawback of smartphone and social media use in healthcare is the negative repercussions of breach of patient confidentiality. To follow with HIPAA Privacy Rule, clinical vignettes posted via web-based media concerning patients must have all individual perceiving information and any uncovering references removed. This “de-identification” should be possible by changing or disposing of key patient components (e.g., names, insurance or Social Security numbers, date of birth, and photos), by keeping up a vital separation from the portrayal of uncommon therapeutic issues, and by excluding specific time ranges or territories without the patient's consent. In any case, there have been numerous coincidental breaches of HIPAA Privacy Rule involving online networking. A study of medical blogs composed by HCPs found that individual patients were portrayed in 42% of the 271 samples studied. These samples, 17% were found to sufficiently incorporate data for patients to distinguish themselves or their providers, and three included conspicuous photos of the patients (Ventola,

The use of Facebook between patients and medical professionals can put the patient’s confidentiality at risk and jeopardises the integrity of health system causing the view that they are seen as trustworthy to change. Better Health Victoia states "By law, your medical records and health information must be kept safe and private by all medical and healthcare professionals". Marks colleague and

As I reviewed a message received from a coworker, about an investigation at the hospital I work at due to a HIPPA violation involving a celebrity I immediately think of the picture taken the previous night. Photographing patients without their consent is indeed a violation of their privacy rights. It is agreed the act of taking a picture with a cell phone or mobile device is an unacceptable behavior in the healthcare setting, especially without patient consent, however, mobile devices in the healthcare setting can be beneficial. It is also safe to assume that technology has advanced in such a way that it makes our tasks of daily communications much simpler and easier, but at what cost. At some point in our lives we are all patients in the healthcare field regardless if we are employed in this field. So, it is the right of every person to have HIPPA protection. “The HIPPA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for individually identifiable health information held by covered entities and their business associates and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information” (Health Information Privacy). In the following paragraphs, I’d like to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of social media and smartphone usage in the healthcare field and also discuss HIPPA laws, ethics and legal principles.

Additionally, the use of social media offers many health departments the means to connect with members of the community and address health disparities (Currie, 2012). Currie (2012) indicates that for many health departments already struggling to perform key function within the community in our current economy, the question many not be whether to adopt social media, but when and how. Furthermore, addressing the disparities among individual health department especially in rural areas. It is vital these rural area health departments strive to gain a better understanding of social media and role in the community especially in a generation so connected to the

As nurses, we have the ethical and legal obligation of protecting patient's right to privacy. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), federal law reinforces and defines privacy through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The use of social media such as Facebook, and Instagram is tremendously growing in popularity. Often nurses feel emotional or excited about their day at work that their post may offer serious potential consequences, and even termination from their jobs. Nurses must always take into consideration their ethical duties to protect patient information because divulging information in the use of social media is a violation of privace and

Henderson, M & Dahnke, M.D (2015, p.62) identifies that the greatest risk in use of social media in health care is to the patient’s privacy and confidentiality. If the established trust between a patient and nurse is broken, the patient may no longer feel comfortable revealing crucial information to health workers. As well as patient privacy and confidentiality, it is also possible for a nurse to cause harm by sharing the private and confidential information of their colleagues via the use of social media.

Social Media can reduce the cost of the healthcare marketing. Facebook; YouTube; and Twitter can help the Board members of the PMH to promote the new clinic and to get new patients from the contacts obtained through the social media.

Using this viewpoint, health care leaders can see the importance of using social media to stay in tuned with what patients are saying. For a health care organization to succeed they must provide quality care and quality service. If the patient population is not satisfied they are likely to vocalize their opinions to friends and families through social media. Health care leaders can create blogs or chats where consumers can express their concerns as a means to fix issues the organization may be experiencing. The information generated from social media can then be used by health care leaders to improve the organization, with the hopes of making their organization a leader in their community.

Social media is becoming an increasingly common feature of
the world of work and this trend looks set to continue. This application of communication technology or computer mediated tools have developed rapidly in our lives. Survey such as that conducted by CIPD (2013) have shown that while only a quarter of UK employees use it in their professional lives, this increases to 42% among employees aged 18–24. The innovative operation mode of social media has not only successfully drawn the attention of industry and academia, but has also boosted user growth, especially in the younger generation.