Question

Please remember to choose the ethical provision you believe would address the issue and remember your citations. A group of senior students have been attending nursing school together since the beginning and are friends with one another on social media. After a particularly tough day at clinical, one of the students begins to rant about the instructor, the clinical site, and the dreadful patient assignment the student had. The student even names the nurse assigned to the patient and the name of the hospital. What should the fellow students do who are classmates and on this social media site with this student?

Answer 1

According to the HIPAA, all organizations need to have and follow social media guidelines to help ensure compliance with HIPAA rules. The department of Health and Human Services' office for civil rights has published social media rules on HIPAA and have enlisted various aspects of HIPAA that apply to social media networks.

1. In most cases, when an employee or member of an organization violates any of the HIPAA rules wherein employee details, patient details or unauthorized pictures of the organization are put up online, they are subject to disciplinary action. In some cases, if the violations are grave, it may lead to criminal charges. In this case, the friends should advise the person in question to carry their conversation outside social media and once that is done, explain to him/her the repercussions of such actions.
2. The fellow classmates could also initiate a request to the organization to start a sensitization program on HIPAA regulations so employees and students may benefit from it. Such trainings should be conducted annually to ensure HIPAA rules and especially social media rules are not forgotten. And are diligently complied with.
3. The foremost rule of using social media in healthcare is to never share protected information or any information that reveals identification of individuals who have not consented to allow use of information pertaining to them on any social media platform. In this case, the person's fellow batchmates must encourage him/her to take down names and pictures immediately and initiate an apology before the situation worsens.