Nursing Ethics | Assignment

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING
Answer 1
Inappropriate use of social media in nursing practice is associated with many ethical
challenges due to boundary violation and violation of patient’s privacy and confidentiality. For
example, violation of the ethical principle of privacy and confidentiality occurs when any
nursing staff posts confidential information about patient in social media or share pictures of
hospitalized patient in social media sites like Facebook. This can increase legal risk for staffs as
they may have to go through disciplinary actions because of breach of patient privacy (Melnik,
2013).. Improper social media use can also violate state and federal laws related to professional
conduct in practice. For example, many staffs may develop personal relationship with patient
during the point of care and they may engage in online social contact with patient. However,
nurses have an obligation to maintain professional boundaries with patient in the online
environment (Denecke et al., 2015). Hence, staffs must be trend to avoid privacy violations while
using social media.
In contrast to the above situation, the main benefits of ethical social media use is that it
will offers physicians and nurse innovative ways to interact with patient without any risk of
privacy violation issues. If they use social media only to staffs contact patient for treatment
update, it will have positive outcome on care quality. Ethical social media usage can protect
staffs from any legal actions too (Denecke et al., 2015).
Answer 2
A registered nurse may experience moral distress when a patient does not give consent
for a treatment although it is urgently required for the safety of patient. This can create moral
distress issue because the nurse can be at risk of violation of patient autonomy or beneficence no