These days some pertinent questions you have to ask yourself before you do anything online are: 

1. Do I Post This Or Not? 

2. Am i doing this for the retweets and the likes or not?

3. Is there any positive facts coming out of this?

 

Lets take a look a few years back:

In the year 2015 a Surgeon posted pictures of patient's internal organs on Facebook. The patient 45-year-old Mohammad Faizal who was then already tormented by a tumour in his heart which was fortunately removed was put in a rather uncomfortable situation by his very own surgeon though later on the doctor later apologised and removed the pictures from the social media forum.

 

But by uploading the images, the doctor had grossly violated the privacy of his patient although he abstained from giving out his name. It was trauma for Faizal as some poked "fun" while commenting on the images.

 

Lets look at some other cases:

1. In 2008 a Swedish nurse was suspended from her job after posting on her Facebook profile pictures of a brain surgery in which she was participating (Salter 2008). 

 

2. The US Johnson County Community College decided to expel four nursing students for posting on Face-book pictures of themselves posing with a human placenta (Gibson 2011). 

 

3. A Mexican anaesthesiologist was fired from a hospital in 2012 for publishing on her Facebook account pictures that depicted a child being immobilized prior to an operation, the amputated legs of an elderly woman, and various surgery pictures where the patients’ faces were visible (Vivas 2012).

 

Breaching of medical privacy can lead to serious legal and other problems. 

 

Its a fact that social media has evolved over the past decade, and now plays an active role in daily life. This phenomenon has changed the way we engage and interact with each other; it has changed how we both share and receive news. With constant posting across different social media channels— Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn — this behavior has truly become a part of us, and something that the majority of the time we don’t think twice about.

 

However in the nursing industry, posting profession-related material could have some serious repercussions. Something that might seem insignificant to you, may in fact be violating multiple laws and privacy ethics.  It’s important to understand social media ethics in nursing.  A simple post to Facebook congratulating patient John Doe that you’ve been working with for months on his recent progress? Big no-no.

 

Here’s a few things to avoid:

 

Do not discuss or refer to patients in any way. We’re not just talking about revealing their name. Anything from information about their diagnosis, condition, room number or, believe it or not, a NICKNAME, technically breaches confidentiality. Not only do these things violate patient confidentiality, they are likely violating facility standards.

 

Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes your co-workers annoy you.  It’s

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