Question

Describe different ways that social media use can violate ethical nursing practices. How can ethical social media use be beneficial to health care professionals and their patients?

Answer 1

Social media is growing at a very rapid rate and is now the the main channel of communication for most of the population. The nursing profession is the unique which has its own body of knowledge with strong roots of ethics, condour of conduct. The ethics plays the significant role in the profession as the ethics in nursing signifies the domains in the incredible manner in providing holistic care to the client with safety and secure care. The ethics are # autonomy #beneficience# non malefficience #justice# veracity. These ethics can be breached by the nurse or the patient in different ways like these blogs, wiki and sites may be possessing the potential risks to patients and the nursing professionals regarding the distribution of poor quality information, breach to the professional dignity, invasion of patients privacy, violation of personal boundaries and other issues, writing about patient on social media, looking the information about the clients on the search engines. Therefore the nursing practice can be disturbed with its ethics by above few ways. Thus a strong fostering of nursing professionals regarding the awareness about the use of social media to be given as a in service education. They also must be catered to provide the therapeutic care within the health care environment and avoid the blogs and other sites for sharing of personal and to have the social relationship which in turn jeopardise the professional etiquettes. Every coin has two side similarly social media can also be a boon to the patients and HCP's. Health care systems are using various social media to improve quality and safety of overall health care deliver by accessing to the information about health and illness from grass root level. # the awareness regarding the outbreak of the disease, immunizations preventive measures can be shared#it acts as a good source of emotional and practical support # it helps to connect with the rest of the rural areas to explore the care and extend hands. # carryout various research activities all over the globe. Thus the social media has both risks and benefits to uplift the profession or damage the dignity of same.