Healthcare social media encompasses the use of many social media platforms by both patients and clinicians, including nurses, in order to share information, stories, experience, and form communities.

Placenta Facebook Photos: Nurse and Mommy Tribes See Student Expulsion Differently

Will patients trust that when they are anesthetized they will be treated respectfully? Will hospitals and other clinical agencies be less inclined to host students for fear of litigation over privacy? I imagine at the very least, all nursing schools are now quickly developing social media policies. The American Medical Association has one and the American Nurses Association is, I’m told, developing one.

2016-11-21T13:14:21-05:00January 12th, 2011|career, Ethics, healthcare social media, nursing perspective, students|14 Comments
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AJN Webnotes: Anatomizing Medical Errors; Insurance Rebates; Social Media and Nurses

The most popular article in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine did not tout the discovery of a novel gene, nor describe a cardiology clinical trial with a clever acronym as its title. Rather, it was the report of a case in which a surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital performed the wrong operation on a 65-year-old woman.

So begins a nicely engaging summary post at The Health Care Blog of the main points of an NEJM article describing how a medical error occurred—and yes, nurses play a major role in the story too.

Feel like your insurance company spends too much time trying to weasel you out of your money? Kaiser Health News reports today that the Affordable Care Act may soon result in a little payback, in the form of rebates:

Millions of Americans might be eligible for rebates starting in 2012 under regulations released Monday detailing the health care law’s requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on direct medical care.


“I have nothing listed under my work experience, yet Facebook somehow knows where I work,” cries Not Nurse Ratched, in a post called “Latest Facebook creepiness rant.” Such surprises are worth considering for anyone who might forget that information has a life of its own on the Web. Speaking of social media and nurses, A Nurse Practitioner’s View gives a quick survey of social media networking platforms […]

2016-11-21T13:14:53-05:00November 22nd, 2010|health care policy, healthcare social media|0 Comments
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A Note on the Life Cycle of Blogs

This is just to say that we realize that personal blogs by nurses have life cycles. They wax and they wane. While a core few are updated consistently, with the occasional gap for a vacation, and live on and on, evolving their appearances or keeping the old reliable appearance, many more simply die a quiet natural death. In many cases, no one plays taps. They served their purpose, they were noticed by a few or many of us, and then they quietly grew quiet.

Sometimes the bloggers say goodbye. Sometimes they just stop as if abducted by aliens. Or by their lives, or jobs, or illness, or death, or families, or by an alter ego. Well, that last bit is just speculation. Often the blogs live on, like deserted homes with the furniture still in them, never growing dusty, never surrounded by weeds or visible decay yet somehow sad. Or not so sad: testaments to an episode in a life in which a voice was raised with humor or outrage or questioning in a solitary room with a keyboard somewhere after the kids were in bed or while the DVR recorded the latest episode of something or other or early in the morning while the plows scraped the streets of the night’s snowfall.

Some nurse bloggers are more bloggers than […]

2016-11-21T13:15:04-05:00November 5th, 2010|healthcare social media, narratives, nursing perspective|6 Comments
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The Latest From a Persistent Campaign to Increase the Accuracy and Usefulness of Health News Reporting

Here at AJN we’ve always been inspired by the work of Gary Schwitzer, whose Web site Health News Review has grown increasingly influential in its role as a watchdog of the accuracy of health news reporting. Schwitzer has recently been blogging from the “Selling Sickness” conference in Amsterdam. Below is a short video interview he shot with the Australian physician Dr. Peter Mansfield, who runs an organization called Healthy Skepticism—and who compares “industry-occupied medicine” to a communist state in its power to control information and drown out dissenting voices. Whether you’re a journalist, a provider, or a potential patient, Schwitzer’s ongoing analysis of health care news provides a model for understanding and filtering the flood of information we get about medications, testing, and various conditions.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ_ER2xSzG0]

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2016-11-21T13:15:17-05:00October 12th, 2010|healthcare social media, Nursing|0 Comments
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Why Didn’t Physicians Know What Nurses Know?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

A recent post on our blog highlighted the experience of AJN’s associate editor Amy Collins in trying to get someone to diagnose the underlying reason for acute confusion in her grandmother. Over a two-week period, Amy’s grandmother was seen by various private and ED physicians, none of whom seemed to have an adequate diagnosis or a suggestion for treatment. Finally, nurses suggested that a urinary tract infection (UTI), fecal impaction, or some other infection might be a factor. It was a fecal impaction and yet none of the five physicians who previously evaluated Amy’s grandmother had thought about or assessed for it.

What the nurses said. Amy’s post generated many comments, both on the blog and on our Facebook page. What was interesting to me was how many nurses knew to first check for a UTI, electrolyte disturbance, or fecal impaction as a reason for confusion. Here are a few samples:

“Though not conclusive, in every case I have seen a change in cognition or behavior it was either a UTI or fecal impaction. I work in home health as a CNA and I am a nursing student.”

“The first thing I think to check is infection (UTI) with elderly, confused patients.”

“I’m a senior nursing student…and this material is on our exam that we are taking Friday. With acute confusion, always check for UTI and constipation.”

“Possible UTI. Possible dehydration &/or  constipation. Poor nutrition. All can (and do) manifest as “altered mental status.” Think I’d start with […]

2016-11-21T13:15:35-05:00September 27th, 2010|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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