Social Media And Its Impact On Society

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.

In the world today, smartphones are becoming the “norm”, with basic phones becoming nearly obsolete in recent years. Pairing the overwhelming presence of social media with the rise in usage of smartphones brings to light an entirely new set of problems and challenges regarding patient privacy. According to a 2010 study conducted regarding various boards of nursing, 67% of executive officers surveyed reported receiving complaints about nurses misusing social media (Spector & Kappel,

This paper examines the public perception of nurses and how social media can be both a detriment and a benefit to the career field.

Social Media in Nursing and The Effect it has on Jobs, Facilities and Nursing Students

Applications are being designed for daily to help nurses maintain that focus on whats really important. Which includes: EpocratesRX, Nursing Central, Nurse’s Pocket Guide, ShiftPlanning, and Evernote which are helpful applications that takes the focus off of social media, messaging,

While using social media can be valuable to doctors and nurses, inappropriate use of these tools can be devastating to a health professional career. Here are some examples

With the advancement of modern technology, social media is increasingly finding use in healthcare delivery and management. Health professionals including doctors, nurses and therapists have adopted social media to communicate with their patients and for health sensitization. Social media can benefit healthcare delivery in a variety of ways including fostering professional connections, patient and community education and promoting communication with patients and families. On the other hand, use of social media in healthcare exposes patients’ data to breaches and leakages creating confidentiality issues. Misuse of patient data results in serious career penalties for negligent medical professionals. Protocols have been established to oversee the use of social medial by health practitioners. The paper seeks to explore the recognized rules that regulate the use of social media, and its risks and benefits. Health professionals should utilize benefits of social media while adhering to confidentiality, privacy, and ethical guidelines for private or professional communications with respect to patient data.

Nancy Spector, whom holds a PhD, RN titles from the University of Wisconsin, distinguishes that most patient privacy violations are due to nurses not taking the time to think before posting and inadvertently putting the patient’s info out for persons not admitted to see it. Spector states “The quick and efficient technology enabling use of social media reduces not only the time it takes to post, but also the time to consider whether the post is appropriate and what ramifications may come from posting inappropriate content.” Nurses should be able to use social media to help further their relationships with patients and co-workers, with the healthy understanding of how to do so wisely.

In the article Ethics and social media (2014, Vol 27(4)), written by Dr. Constance Milton, the author discusses how to choose the proper media applications for nurses since they are bonded by obligations and liabilities toward human kind dignity.

Social media has become a highly effective tool for nursing practitioners owing to the current technological advances. A variety of social media platforms are available for nursing professionals including networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus, blogging platforms such as Tumblr and Blogger, micro blogs such as Twitter, collaborative knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia and media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, p.62). These tools offer nursing professionals the opportunity and capacity to communicate, network, learn and share information. Nurses can now easily interact with patients, colleagues, students and other healthcare providers to educate, discuss and share information that promotes healthy behaviours and improved nursing practice. In the wake of increased social media use in healthcare, it is important to identify its benefits in the nursing profession. This essay outlines four key advantages of using social media in nursing, illustrating various ways that nurses can leverage social media effectively to grow in their profession.

The rapid evolution of technology has fostered the birth of social media and its growth is evident in today’s society. Social media is defined as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)” (“Social media”, 2016). It can serve different purposes according to the individual. It can include personal and professional networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. The increased use of social media in professional nursing practice presents a variety of ethical challenges.

Westrick’s article about the ethics of social media is very pertinent as today’s population is obsessed with Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and the like (2016). The potential misuse of electronic platforms by nursing students is of growing concern in nursing education. Unfortunately, if not corrected, this behavior will follow the individual throughout their career. This article explores these topics and the consequences of misuse of social media in nursing programs.

When you observe a person’s line of work, social media will always be involved, regardless whether it plays a large or small part in their career. In the field of nursing, social media has always had great value. The use of blogs, online chat rooms, personalised pages, and discussion forums to communicate both professionally and personally to patients and their family members, after they have left the hospital, are just some of the different ways in which social media has been incorporated into the health system. Nurses who are consistently looking to share their experiences with other health professionals also use social media as a means of support.

While many people put off and ignore the issue of social media and its downfalls, others say that people should think about how our lives are being affected by this advancement in technology, including, lack of human contact and precious time being lost due to consumption with social media. Social media is currently a highly controversial topic in which numerous people have mixed feelings. Society has typically viewed new advancements in technology as beneficial and a sign of success within their country. But, has it solely caused successful outcomes, or are there downfalls to these advancements?

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.