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
