Question

Using anthropological thinking, respond to the following questions:

• How do nurses use media?
• How has the introduction of various forms of media over the past 10 to 20 years affected nurses in their professional lives?
• How has it affected nurses in their daily interactions?
• What are some ways media anthropologists could contribute to the understanding or betterment of nursing practice and of how nurses consume or even produce media?

Answer 1

1) Nurses use media in many ways personally and professionally

Common examples include Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Social media is about the ability to easily connect, save, and access content through services that enable information sharing and collaboration with others.

Under this broad understanding, social media can be used in many different ways. The most obvious impact of these technologies is social opportunities.

Nurses can access information for their workplace or personal lives, connect with colleagues, share information about best practices, and advance health through personal and professional means. This section of the article will begin discussion about health implications of using social media for nurses, both individually and in the workplace.

2,3) Nurses write and maintain blogs, post healthcare information on Twitter and Facebook, and upload to and/or view visual content on you tube ‒ all aimed at promoting the nursing profession by educating the public. Obviously, interactive media has become a powerful form of communication in the nursing field.

They maintain blogs , discussion groups, you tube etc

The media has both postive and negative effects on their professional life

As nurses navigate social networking sites, chat rooms, blogs, and public forums, they – sometimes unknowingly – approach a dangerously thin line between professional and personal online etiquette and even run the risk of breaking federal and/or state laws.

Healthcare employees are tasked not only with maintaining patient confidentiality and privacy, but also serve to represent their place of employment in a positive manner. Inappropriate use of social media can lead to disciplinary action, which can, in the most serious cases, negatively affect both a nurse’s career and his/her licensure.

4) Anthropologists can apply research strategies and key theoretical concepts of our field to solve pressing public health problems, understand the spread of disease , and improve the delivery of health care.

By involving anthropologists on a clinical level it is possible to reduce the impact of the culture 'factor' on disease prevalence.

Many medical anthropologists see this model of disease as outdated and inaccurate because "it reduces the investigation of social and cultural aspects of disease to discrete, static, quantifiable 'beliefs' held by the study population". This factorial notion of disease seems to involve the reasoning that factors of disease causation such as biology and environment are beyond the reach of culture.