Analyzing Social Media's Impact: Nurses, Ethics, and Practice

This essay delves into the multifaceted impact of social media on the nursing profession, examining both its advantages and disadvantages. The essay begins by highlighting the widespread popularity and accessibility of social media, emphasizing the importance of responsible usage among nurses. It then explores the pros, such as opportunities for self-education, professional networking, and efficient communication with patients, including the use of visual tools like YouTube for educational purposes. The essay also discusses the cons, including the potential for inaccurate information, distractions, privacy violations, and the blurring of professional boundaries, and decreased productivity. Guidelines for nurses regarding social media use are also outlined. The conclusion summarizes the balanced perspective, emphasizing the need for nurses to exercise caution and adhere to ethical standards when using social media to avoid negative consequences and maintain their professional integrity.

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Pros and Cons of Social Media
use of nurses
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Introduction
Social media is one of the most popular and user-friendly tools these days. It is important for
nurses to use social media with responsibility. Getting information on social media is easy
because of its massive reach. Social media has two sides to it positive and negative side.
Healthcare professionals are to maintain professionalism to assure patients, they are in safe hands
(Ramona Nelson, 2013). Nurses can use social media to educate themselves, interact with heath
care professional. A nurse has to be careful while using social media. Misuse of social media by
healthcare professionals or nurses can destroy their careers. Below given essay will express
certain guidelines, pros and cons to social media use of nurses.
Social media use of nurses
Nurses or healthcare profession is professional set up because human life is involved. In general
it is always said to keep professional and personal life detached. Nurses can use social media but
they have to understand the balance between private life and professional life. Social media is an
internet-based tool that allows sharing personal stand or data on any topic or situation; it includes
networking pages like Facebook, blogs, and articles. Nurses should reflect before they post
anything on social media and make sure nothing controversial is posted. Sometimes patients try
to meet health care professionals or practitioners outside professional boundaries and they should
be straight away turned down. (Ontario, 2019). Health practitioners need to keep the interactions
professional. A nurse should not enter into a friendship or any other personal relationship with a
patient or their family members. Nurses can have personal social media accounts and build
professional connections with patients. Social media is useful when used consciously. Social
media helps in communicating with patients but at the same time, it is required to maintain a

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balance between the spread of personal and professional information (Nancy spectre, 2015).
There are barriers like lack of time, and lack of research facts or education material. Social
media provides platforms for communication and collaboration. The purpose of this write up is
to highlight the use of social media, pros and cons of social media use of nurses.
Pros of social media use for nurses
Social media if used consciously can be a great device to educate you. Any information an
individual is looking for is just clicks away. Health care practitioners or any student can educate
themselves on any topic using social media. Students can attend lectures happening in Australia
while sitting in Canada. Health care professionals can connect to health care practitioners and
educated them about diseases and the cure to it. All newspapers, articles and journals are easily
available on social media for self-education. Students become more aware about current
happenings of the world. Spreading awareness is also an advantage of social media. In today's
environment people ignore or neglect health issues but through Social media it becomes easy for
nurses to spread awareness. It lets people know about latest viruses or diseases spreading in the
country or outside country. Most importantly it makes people aware about the precautions to be
taken; spreading cure of diseases has become easy because of the massive presence of people on
social media (Jianlei Hao, 2017). Professional networking and improving their brand is also very
important in nursing. Efficient communication, nurses can communicate with their patients
easily on social media. Now a days nursing schools uses tools like YouTube to demonstrate
concepts to students. Students find the concept of visual interesting and it keeps them motivated
throughout the lecture. learning Nurses that work in rural areas can keep themselves updated
through the use of social media. Nurses can use social media and connect with their patients and

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help them with particular precautions and medication. Although social media has advantages, it
also has disadvantages as well.
Cons of social media use for nurses
There are high chances of the information present on the website inaccurate. There are no
specific references or reliable sources to the information. Nursing students get distracted because
of social media websites like socializing apps, games, and songs and that harms their learning
capacity. Social media is interruption during working hours. It becomes difficult to keep personal
information private, sometimes health care practitioners use private information without proper
consent which is later treated as violation of confidentiality. Health care professionals cannot
give personal information to their patients or build a personal relation with them (standard,
2019). Nurses or healthcare professionals need to maintain face-to-face relationships with their
patients. Nurses should make sure to use the only professional account when interacting with a
patient on social media. There are certain guidelines for nurses to use social media which they
have to follow (INRC, 2019). The decrease in productivity is another con of social media. Social
media is a time-consuming activity that can decrease the productivity of a student (Dr. Kung,
2014). Last but not least; nurses should be aware of the consequences of posting inappropriate
information or facts on social media. A person on social media tends to believe false information
and takes the information as facts on social media (Gloria Copeland Smith, 2015). Nurse’s
unintentional use of private information can ruin their reputation also they might face
consequences such as termination from job, lose their registration temporarily or permanently.

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Conclusion
To sum up, social media has some pros and cons. It gives nurses the power to educate
themselves, interact with the professionals and collaborate in research work happening in
different country. But sometimes privacy of healthcare professionals or patients suffers. People
get aware of the latest happenings in their surroundings. Both sides of social media are debatable
by different people. Social media is time-consuming and creates distractions. Social media has
changed everyone's life in both positive and negative ways. It depends on the person how he or
she uses social media. However, nurses or healthcare professionals have to be extra careful when
they use social media. By doing so, nurses can avoid risk of facing negative consequences.

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References
Dr Kung, D. O. (2014). CIN. Characteristics of Nurses Who Use Social Media, 64-72.
Gloria Copeland Smith, T. K. (2015). student nusres' unethical behavior, on social media and
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Jianlei Hao, B. G. (2017). Journal of Primary Health Care and. Advantages and Disadvantages
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Nancy specter, R. c. (2015). journal of nursing regulations. Nurses and Social Media: Regulatory
Concerns and Guidelines, 37-40.
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