Think before you blog
So the blogosphere (still can’t believe we use that word in all seriousness) has been abuzz with the case of the Nina Yoder whose school said she crossed the line when she talked about patients in her myspace blog. (the pdf is available here). She was kicked out (no hearing, nothin’ just kicked out) and she then sued and won. It doesn’t seem like she violated actual HIPAA rules, she was mostly just crass and inappropriate.
I think this case brings up some very important questions about social networking and nursing ethics. If Yoder had expressed her opinions to her classmates in post-conference, her instructor might have frowned and said “um, c’mon now” Her classmates would have probably laughed. But because she put them on myspace the school considered it a different matter entirely. It isn’t entirely clear how the school came to read Yoder’s myspace entries but if the school’s administrators can access them, guess who else could read it? Right. Patients. Family members. However unlikely it is that a random family member who come across a student nurses’ blog on myspace, it could happen. And the result of a family member reading that a student nurse found their patient “disgusting?” Well it’s not a therapuetic outcome that’s for sure.
Nurses let off steam by talking about patients, gross stuff that happens on the floor, and their sometimes mixed feelings about family members’ and patients’ personal and medical situations. But write it down, and the rules change, ethically at least. Publish it for the world to see? Another set of rules entirely.