"Lessons Learned from Litigation: Legal and Ethical Consequences of Social Media" (Legal Clinic, September) sparked in me a desire to focus on social media posts made by friends and coworkers, and I realized many of these posts could be regarded as unprofessional.
In every area of health care, there is potential damage that can occur from input on social media. Many times coworkers will say, "It must have been a bad day yesterday, it was all over Facebook!" We need to start holding each other accountable when we see inappropriate posts about work or our colleagues. We should not be sharing our professional lives on Facebook in a negative manner. Our profession holds us to a higher standard.
My plan is to approach my manager about this issue and brainstorm how we can prevent these cases of unprofessional social media posts from occurring in our hospital. What might start out as an innocent post can become damaging. What appears on social media remains even if one deletes the post.
Linda Griffith, RN-ONC
Wilmington, NC