Social Media and Mobile Devices in Healthcare

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Mobile health devices and social media are a powerful tool that can support healthcare workers in their everyday practice in many different ways. For example, smartphone-based applications have the potential to become vital in the process of collecting and updating patient information in real time. The amounts of information about the patients’ health, prescribed medications, laboratory test results, and other necessary indicators, which must be memorized and processed by doctors and nurses, are constantly growing. In order to successfully manage all that data, my current workplace – [Hospital/Organization Name] has proactively employed mobile health applications and digital systems. According to Baig et al. (2017), patient administration, billing, health information, making appointments, monitoring of laboratory results, and clinical decision support can be performed via those applications. It could be rather beneficial to promote further digitalization of all healthcare industry, as it brings significant advantages with it.

Meanwhile, social media can provide a strong educational and promotional support to healthcare professionals, especially to those who work in a community setting. Spreading verified, scientific information about current public health issues, educating the population, offering accessible healthcare guidelines for schools and non-commercial organizations – those are the examples of how social media is used in my current workplace. My colleagues and I also maintain a steady and professional social media presence to facilitate trust in our organization and encourage people to seek medical advice from us.

A policy relevant to that aspect of the social media use has been added to the ANA’s Guidelines for Social Networking. ANA (2011) states that “nurses should evaluate all their postings with the understanding that a patient, colleague, educational institution, or employer could potentially view those postings” (p. 6). This is a serious issue, as there are many instances where indecent online behavior of an employee has endangered the reputation of the whole organization. The policy not only reinstates that healthcare workers – especially nurses – should maintain a professional online profile but also specifically addresses the problem of posting false or unchecked health information. Such an addition became especially important during the time of pandemic when healthcare workers and organizations posting unverified data could potentially endanger the population. The policy supports ethical and responsible information sharing, enforces patient data safety in nursing practice, and emphasizes that nurses, who are at the forefront of working with patients, must remain professional both offline and online.

A successful interprofessional strategy a DNP nurse could propose would revolve around protection of patient safety and responsible use of patient data, especially in cases where it is transferred between departments. It is crucial to ensure that all employees understand the importance of ethical use of mobile health tools and social media. Thus, a DNP nurse could prepare a short training program for nurses and doctors that would specifically address digital and social media literacy.

First of all, the DNP nurse would have to evaluate the employees’ knowledge on the protection of patient privacy and safe use of social media – it could be done through self-assessment questionnaires. How to properly admit Medicare patients digitally, how to order medication, or merge duplicate health records are the examples of skills to be assesses (Sayles & Kavanaugh-Burke, 2021). After that, the DNP nurse should review the information provided in the questionnaires and determine the weak points in the employees’ knowledge about responsible use of mobile devices and social media. Zhou et al. (2018) emphasize that “it is essential and necessary to have a good understanding of the potential benefits of social media for health care and related challenges that need to be addressed” (p. 140). Operating on this data, a training can be designed that would specifically target these weak points and educate the employees on existing guidelines regarding social media and mobile devices use. After the completion of the training, self-assessment questionnaires could be distributed again to evaluate the effectivity of the training.

References

American Nurses Association. (2011). ANA’s principles for Social Networking and the nurse. ANA Enterprise. Web.

Baig, M. M., Gholam-Hosseini, H., Moqeem, A. A., Mirza, F., & Lindén, M. (2017). Clinical decision support systems in hospital care using ubiquitous devices: Current issues and challenges. Health Informatics Journal, 25(3), 1091–1104.

Sayles, N. B., & Kavanaugh-Burke, L. (2021). Introduction to information systems for health information technology. AHIMA Press.

Zhou, L., Zhang, D., Yang, C. C., & Wang, Y. (2018). Harnessing Social Media for Health Information Management. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 27, 139–151.

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