Social Media and the Healthcare Professional

The last time I was in engaged in formal post secondary education was 15 years ago while completing my Bachelor of Science degree at Ryerson University. In the time since then social media has changed the way that we see the world and how as individuals and professionals we interact with the world online. The only lessons I remember learning about social media all those years ago came from a clinical adviser in one of my placements. The basics of her advice was this, be careful, don’t talk about work and don’t tell anyone you’re a nurse on the internet. As I begin my journal through post graduate studies I have come to realize how much the online presence of professionals has changed and that I have a lot to learn about how to manage my online professional presence. Being invisible is no longer sufficient in today's online, multimedia world.

In order to prepare myself I’ve begun by evaluating the expectations of my professional governing body and workplace and identifying tools that are available in managing content in the online world. Here’s a summary of what I’ve accomplished thus far and wish me luck as I go forward!

Online Professionalism

• Registered Nurses in Ontario are mandated by the CNO to practice nursing within specific standards of practice and guidelines, however there is no practice standard relating specifically to the use of social media (CNO, 2014). The CNO does offer a webinar on responsible social media use. Click here for more information

• The CNO does direct nurses concerned about appropriate media use to a published report by the International Nurse Regulator Collaborative that outlines nine clear expectations for a nurse’s behaviour when using social media (INRC, 2016). The College directs nurses when using social media to do so within established standards especially relating to Confidentiality and Privacy and Therapeutic Nurse-Client Relationships.

• Nurses outside of Ontario rely on the College’s in their home province to guide their own practice related to social media use. Here are examples from nursing professional agencies in both BC and New Brunswick . There are many similarities in the language of these resources that center around the clients right to privacy, respectful language and the integrity of using appropriate channels of authority to address concerns.

Curation of Data

Full disclosure, when I first started exploring this topic through MHST601 I was so confused. Having been in school so long ago, I was repeatedly reminded that journal articles (and maybe a government website here or there) where the only relevant sources of information. Too many “www” references on your assignments were a sure sign of a lack of credible research. After reading through classroom posts, trolling through Twitter, and exploring more programs and watching more YouTube videos than my six-year-old, I realize that relevant and valuable information is found in so many other places.

This brings me to content curation. Finding what is out there in cyber-space, keeping it organized and synthesizing into relevant information. Here are some reviews of content curation tools I have explored so far in the course and how I am making them relevant to increasing my digital literacy.

• Mendeley - Mendeley is a great online tool for storing, sorting and making notes on journal articles. I have found it easy to use and create files for organizing papers by subject. The program can be opened with group files if several authors are collaborating on one paper, but otherwise the information is stored individually and not an open source for online collaboration. RefWorks works in much the same way,but I found the software for Mendeley more user friendly.

• Pocket was identified by other students via Twitter and on our classroom posts. It allows you to save almost anything on the internet into one easy to reach “pocket”. I find it easy to use on my phone and home computer and your account can be opened on any devise. As I’ve been researching on how to write blogs and what exactly content curation means to me I have found it easy to use and organize the information (even for a beginner like me!)

• Personal Blogs – I had to do a little research here to figure out exactly how “blogging” was relevant to my search to understand content curation. One definition of what a blog is says it is “a website that consists of entries called posts that appear in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first” (Gunelius, 2018). Blogs can be a useful tool to synthesis the information found, interpret the information into what is relevant to you and then post your own thoughts. I watched a really simple YouTube video on “How to Curate Content to Improve Your Blog”. This gives the beginner like me great overview into how to take the content I’ve curated on an application like Pocket and post my own ideas.

• Personal Webpages. You’ll see here I’m using Wix. I’ve started to use the templates available online to format my own professional portfolio. Including this blog! After a little trial and error, I’ve found to templates easy to use. I like that the program is free to use and publish your site. Classmates in our online classroom have been using the same site and others such as Wordpress.

• Exploring Twitter through this course has shown me the value of professional connections on social media. I always assumed that Twitter was just used to follow celebrity tweets and American politics. Opening up my Twitter account has allowed me to follow nurses associations that I am affiliated with and I have read interesting articles and postings by classmates MHST601. I'm still learning to navigate the Twitter universe, but you can follow my account @CoraleeSonnenb1 on Twitter.

So, what have I learned?

All those years ago in nursing school the essence of what my teacher said about social media still rings true. When using social media nurses need to remember their obligation to maintain their integrity online. We have a duty to protect our clients right to privacy, confidentiality and be accountable for what we post. By creating this online portfolio, I am learning to harness content from multiple sources on the internet and use available tools to organize data for future reference. Looking forward to the journey of creating a visible professional presence in the online world!

References

College of Nurses of Ontario. (2014). New Social Media Resource. Retrieved May 4, 2018 from http://www.cno.org/en/news/2014/september-2014/new-social-media-guidelines/

Gunelius, R. (2018). The Definition, Origin, and Purpose of the Term 'Blog'. Retrieved from

https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-blog-3476707

International Nurse Regulator Collaborative. (2016). Social Media Use: Common Expectations for Nurses. Retrieved from http://www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/incr- social-media-use-common-expectations-for-nurses.pdf