The Role Of Social Media On Healthcare

Social media is different from more traditional marketing tactics as it offers a free platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. This allows for the increase communication for organizations to foster brand awareness and often, and

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

There are many public service announcements, advertisements, or paid social marketing that target the health field. Methods that are used in other industries that can be use in hospitals is the emergence of new technology. Technology that offer easier communication to health providers and their patient. It will also enable them to learn skills that are needed in their daily lives or future jobs. Social media has also taken a huge toll on hospitals and health systems. Generally, social media is used to communicate things outside of the work field. Today, it is use to communicate messages about current and new issues. Overall, the methods of media is one of the innovation that helps to improve communication in the health care field. It allows easy understanding through the healthcare providers and its

Social media in hospitals can affect the patient as well as the nurse and the nursing student. Westrick states: “Nurses must find a balance between taking advantage of the benefits social media use

Social media has taken over the way that we interact with one another. It is leading the way in which we communicate with family, friends, coworkers and strangers. It is also the way we keep up with our favorite celebrities and gossip. Social media and the use of smartphones are becoming more prevalent in business and the healthcare field as well. According to Pew Research Center, “62% of smartphone owners have used their phone in the past year to look up information about a health condition” (April, 2015). Technology, just like all things come with flaws

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.

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

The Mayo Clinic uses digital marketing, social media, built patient communities, use different marketing tactics, and constantly innovating. The Mayo Clinic started using digital marketing in 1997. They recognize how technology has evolved and are able to keep up with the rapid growth of technology. As we all know, the world lives and breathes social media. The Mayo Clinic uses social media to market their organization, with “over 1.28 million Twitter followers and over 867,000 likes on Facebook” (Bloom Creative, 2016). They have created a community (blog) for patients nationwide to share their experiences and stories. This helps the patients feel they are understood and provides the sense that they are not alone in their journey. By bringing in different marketing tactics, the Mayo Clinic is able to use all avenues to share information/updates more quickly. They could just write about a specific topic, but they take it a step beyond that by sharing online through Facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. The Mayo Clinic has several innovations like, mobile apps, videos (on youtube) to provide visuals on a surgery you may have coming up, and they offer virtual question and answers with real

The use of social media can be very beneficial to health care in different ways, including fostering professional connections, promoting timely communication with patients and family members, and educating and informing consumers and health care professionals. Social media is changing the way that health professionals and patients interact with each other. The use of social media and other electronic communication is expanding exponentially as the number of social media outlets, platforms and applications available continue to increase. Individuals use blogs, social networking sites, video sites, online chat rooms and forums to communicate both personally and professionally with others (NCSBN, 2011).

The use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram has grown exponentially. There are currently 1.5 billion Facebook users in the world (Statisa, 2015). The way the world use these websites has change. It is no longer used for the sole purpose of staying in touch with family and friends. It allows for the formation of groups of people with chronic diseases, which have the same illness to connect, share, compare symptoms, and treatment plans (Khans-Sarasohn, 2008). Research has shown that social media have revolutionize the health care system and is a valuable medium in disseminating information and promoting health on a larger scale (Jackson, Fraser, & Ash 2014). The social media can play an important role in providing a network for clinicians and patient alike to share and gather information amongst them. This type of medium allows the individual to become proactive and more involve in their plan of care. Due to the easy access of information, patients are no longer relying solely on what a doctors say. In other words what the doctor says is no longer final. It has now common for patients to seek alternate routes in finding information and treatments.

“Social media have invaded health care from at least three fronts: innovative startups, patient communities and medical centers” (John Sharp 2010). The Social Media arena helps the health care system for their planning strategy and their marketing. However, their use is very controversial. There is a discussion about the use of social media in the healthcare settings due to its vulnerability. Even though social media is important for the healthcare development, the security issues will remain big concerns for the healthcare system.

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.

Massachusetts General Hospital uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. The knowledge and use of twitter is something that is very noticeable with the use of many different hashtags for all the events and messages that the organization is trying to get out while also maintaining a relationship with other organizations and individuals through the use of retweeting techniques. While the use of Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube is generally positive, the most prominent social media use is located on the public Facebook page. Unlike all the other social media mediums, the Facebook group is something that you can find all the latest and up-to-date information on this organization and their partners by looking at the Facebook page that is updated a few times a day. With all the information that I have gathered, I think that the website is very manageable and user friendly and the social media accounts are mediums that you can get a good in-depth material on the organization that is

Today, many businesses are experiencing the effects of social media. Government, businesses, and communities interact through social media and use it to access their investors and potential customers. According to Donovan (2016), “Most types of businesses today make use of different tactics and techniques to make a significant exposure of their website to its target customers.” The goal is to use social media to maximize their potential in order to be one of the strongest participants in the business world.