Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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Blogroll Housecleaning Note

February 9, 2012

"N-R-O-G super suds housecleaning week&qu...

This is just to say that we’ve done some minor housekeeping and deleted links to a number of blogs that have been asleep several months or longer. There’s nothing personal in this, and please let us know if one of these was yours and you’ve decided to revive your blog, give it an infusion of new design and energy, or the like. We want our blogroll to be useful, and it won’t be perceived as useful if we’re linking to sites that have gone dark. Please also let us know if there’s a really great nurse blog that we don’t know about, even if it’s yours. We can’t guarantee that we’ll link to it, but we’ll certainly check it out.—JM, blog editor

Posted in social media, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments »

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Webnotes: Nurse Comics, Uninsurance, Hospital Image vs. Reality, Social Media Guidance

September 15, 2011

The Web comes back to life after Labor Day weekend. Will, the nurse and artist who relates episodes from his life in comics at Drawing on Experience, has a new post about starting a job in a cardiothoracic intensive care unit (CTICU). There’s a thumbnail version of it below—click it to see the actual post in full size at his blog.

The best hospitals? The New York Times reports that “the country’s leading hospital accreditation board, the Joint Commission, released a list on Tuesday of 405 medical centers that have been the most diligent in following protocols to treat conditions like heart attack and pneumonia.” Many of the hospitals often considered among the “best” (including those in New York City) did not, however, make this list (though some came very close). While hospital representatives argue that there are several mitigating factors that might have influenced these findings, this is a reminder that reputation and the presence of famous specialists may not necessarily mean the best care.

Their own darn fault. Though some may laugh at letting sick people who can’t pay for care just die, many of us are able to imagine ourselves, a friend, or neighbor in such a situation. For those who believe America should be more like Victorian England in its division between the the haves and have-nots (bring back debtors’ prisons!), good news: such hilarious down-on-their-luck characters should be easier than ever to find:

Nearly one million more Americans went without health insurance in 2010 than in 2009. This distressing news is further evidence of the need for government safety net programs and the national health care reforms that will take effect mostly in 2014.

Social media guidance for nurses. Last, but not least, the American Nurses Association (ANA) has released new social networking principles (which, somewhat surprisingly, given the topic, you have to purchase!). Still, it’s good that these exist, since nurse blogger Megen Duffy recently noted in her September iNurse column in AJN, “Patient Privacy and Company Policy in Online Life”:

Social media is a newcomer to health care, and policies are still being formulated. Mistakes will occur, and policies will be revised. Nurses can rise to the challenge and make sure their voices are heard in the formulation of workable guidelines; we live and breathe the nursing process, and if something isn’t working, we reassess and implement another plan.

Leave us your comments. This is social media, after all.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor 

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Posted in art and nursing, health care reform, nursing perspective | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

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Patient Privacy and Company Policy: What Nurses Should Know About Social Media

August 26, 2011

Should you be able to have an online discussion about hospital policies that aren’t working or are unfair? What if the point of your discussion is to improve working conditions or to troubleshoot and not to cast an uncomplimentary light on your employer? Right now, the answer is “good question.”

If you’re a nurse or health care worker of any sort, if you sometimes use one or more of the many available social media options (Facebook, blogging, Twitter, etc.), if you’re worried about what it’s OK for you to do or say online, if you have a job or are thinking of looking for one, we strongly suggest you take a look at this month’s iNurse column in AJN (quoted above).

In it, Megen Duffy, RN, aka blogger Not Nurse Ratched, considers such issues as the following:

  • hospital social media policies (always read them; some are surprisingly restrictive)
  • HIPAA and potential issues raised by blogging about aspects of work
  • the ways your social media history may be mined by HR departments at prospective employers
  • the reasons why she strongly believes that social media isn’t going away and has many potential benefits, despite various well-publicized pitfalls—and why nurses need to let their input be known so that social media policies will be sane and balanced

And, since this is social media, we hope you’ll let us know your thoughts, in the form of comments. Maybe Megen will even weigh in, if you really get her attention.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

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Posted in ethical issues, legal issues, professional identity, social media | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

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Nurses, Hospitals, and Social Media: It Depends What Business You’re In

January 19, 2011

By Julianna Paradisi, RN

Zuckerberg/via Flickr, World Economic Forum

Before the placenta picture posted on Facebook made national news, I read Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year 2010,” by Lev Grossman. Born in 1984, Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, is decades younger than the average working nurse. According to the article, so many people now belong to Facebook that if the Web site were a country “it would be the third largest, behind only China and India.” To refuse to recognize the social impact of Facebook is to miss the boat.

Throughout the nurse blogosphere, nurses are demanding that hospitals create policies about the use of social media. Some hospitals have. Not surprisingly, these documents state that no unauthorized photographs of staff, patients, or patient care areas should be taken, let alone posted on the Internet.

Hospitals with social media policies are not necessarily squelching their employees’ right to freedom of speech. They don’t want to spend time and money in court defending their public image. They already spend lots of money on marketing. They are in the business of patient care, not entertainment. So hospitals with social media polices take the position that you can post or tweet to your heart’s content, but should keep in mind the following:

  • Nothing you post is private.
  • If your online behavior disrupts patient care or creates hospital liability, the hospital reserves the right to fire you.

Consider your personal commitment to your own rights. Do you really want to catch every ball that’s thrown to you? Hospitals don’t want to spend their time and money on social media lawsuits. Do you?

Social media is not going away. One of Mark Zuckerberg’s profitable insights is that people like reading about and seeing their friends and friends of friends online. A few years ago, many of us were upset when the Patriot Act made it possible to force libraries and bookstores to report which books their patrons read. Now we want everyone to know what books we “like,” and no one seems to mind that Amazon tracks what we read, then focuses ads according to our purchases.

My own concept of privacy is changing. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in art and nursing, ethical issues, health care reform, media depictions of nursing, patient perspective, social media, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

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Social Media and Nurses — Does Betty White Have a Point?

August 9, 2010

50 Social Media Icons/Ivan Walsh, via Flickr

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I’ve been extremely busy and have had trouble finding time to write a post for this blog. And it’s not enough just to write a post—we’ve got to think about what should go on Facebook and what should be Tweeted, whether we should do a mention in the eNewsletter and if a topic deserves a spot on AJN’s home page. All this communication takes time.

When she hosted Saturday Night Live, the inimitable Betty White acknowledged all the fans on Facebook who were the driving force behind the campaign to have her become the host. She confessed she didn’t know what Facebook was, and said, “Now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it seems like a huge waste of time.”

Facebook and Twitter sort of remind me of the Valentine’s Day card exchange in grammar school—everyone bought boxes of 100 cards (actually, more like small, cheap postcards) so you could give them out and, hopefully, get as many in return. It was about the number of cards you could collect—even if they were from classmates you didn’t care about or even disliked. You felt good if you had lots of cards and people saw that you had lots of cards; getting just a few cards made you feel friendless.

I know why we at AJN are involved in all this e-media and social media—we want to connect with you, our readers and potential readers, and learn what’s important to you, what’s on nurses’ minds, so we can provide information that fits your needs and is important to your work. For the last 100 years, we’ve done this in print format, teaching videos, and conferences, but now there are many more venues for disseminating content. So we Tweet, blog, Facebook, comment, link, e-mail, and do everything we can to connect, deliver content, and get feedback. (Bonus: we have found some new columnists and authors through our e-efforts, and we’re constantly trading tips with other health care editors, journalists, and writers.)

But I’m still stymied about why so many nurses, who are extremely busy people, spend the time it takes to do all this connecting. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in nursing perspective, professional identity, Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Mid-October Rainy Thursday Web Roundup

October 15, 2009

By Jacob Molyneux, blog editor/senior editor

The nursosphere is thriving and Change of Shift, the always interesting compendium of what’s new on nursing blogs, is up over at Emergiblog.

The health care reform process creeps slowly but surely toward an end someone somewhere can surely envision. One crucial question many are still asking is whether insurance companies might serve consumers a bit more readily and agreeably if they were forced to face a little competition from a public option. After all, isn’t competition supposed to be a good thing?

Most experts don’t expect the H1N1 vaccine to pose any more danger than the seasonal flu vaccine; even so, many Americans (and nurses commenting here, or taking our poll about the mandatory vaccine) continue to be wary, prompting public health officials to engage in especially aggressive surveillance measures in order to quickly detect any possible negative reactions to the vaccine: “Government Keeps Close Eye on Swine Flu Vaccine.”

AJN clinical editor Christine Moffa posted here a while back about how meditation might help cranky or exhausted or overworked nurses stay focused on what matters during the workday. Today the NY Times has a related piece on “doctor burnout” and meditation.

The role of social media in health care is constantly evolving as we all find our way. Its use by hospital workers is at issue in a recent post at Running a Hospital, about one hospital’s decision to ban social media from all its computers. And here’s something else on this: blogger Not Nurse Ratched wonders if social media policies in the workplace are going too far. How are Facebook, Twitter, etc., being used at your hospital?

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Posted in ethical issues, H1N1 virus (swine flu), health care reform, media depictions of nursing, nursing perspective, writing and nursing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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