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Social Media Impact on Healthcare
Liberty University
Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA/HEALTHCARE 2
Social Media (SM) is rapidly evolving and paving multiple avenues of communication.
Effective communication is essential in healthcare. Social media in healthcare broadens its
ability for healthcare professionals to communicate and provide information to patients. SM also
has the potential to provide educational opportunities to nurses, physicians, and patients. It has
many advantages and disadvantages to the healthcare field. Personal security and patients’ health
information are at a great risk on social media. Healthcare organizations have a responsibility to
advocate for the safety of patients’ health information on social media.
Nelson and Staggers defines social media as an application used to create an online
environment that is established for the purpose of mass collaboration. Social media is used for
social networking which has changed the way individuals, businesses, and organizations
experience and interact with the world of healthcare (2019, p. 221). The use of Facebook,
Twitter, Wikipedia, and Instagram, the most common social networks, have accelerated over
time.
An array of health information’s accessibility has amplified with the use of the internet,
which has opened a vast milieu for healthcare professional and patients. Web 2.0 has laid a
technological foundation for the advent of social media podiums. Statistics has shown that
patient-provider relationships have improved due to patients’ autonomy of access of their online
health information.
The Benefits of Social Media
The key benefits of social media for patients are the opportunities of interrelating with
other patients, the emotional support, the possibility of better research, which allows them to ask
physicians, pharmacists, insurers better questions, and the possibility to interact at any time. On
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the other hand, the main benefits of social media for healthcare organizations consist in the
possibility to provide prompt answers to patients’ questions; a better understanding of the patient,
the problems he/she faces in his/her everyday activities, his/her fears and unmet needs;
concerned about medical education and potentially interested in the organization’s services.
(Pentescu et al., 2015, p. 651). SM is valuable in offering a podium for internet discourse and
provision amid patients with mutual medical conditions. The most common effect of patients
using social media for health-related reasons is patient empowerment, which is represented
through three categories: enhanced subjective well-being, enhanced psychological well-being,
and improved self-management and control (Smailhodzic et al p. 442).
The Challenges of Social Media
The utmost substantial challenge for the use social media is preserving privacy in
healthcare. Patients have encountered that it takes too much time to learn how to use social
media. Other challenges seen are that it is too easy to make a mistake posting something that’s
prohibited by an employer’s social media policy and it is too easy to make a mistake and post
something inappropriate (Nelson & Staggers, 2019, p. 225).
In compliance to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),
personal and health information are required to be protected by all healthcare organizations.
Many healthcare providers are reluctant to use social media. The providers’ resistance is met due
to the vulnerability of patients’ personal and health information.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) has created a set of principles to help guide
nurses when using social media, allowing them to get the best out of it while safeguarding
themselves, the profession, and their patients:
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ANA principles for social networking:
1. Nurses must not transmit or place online individually identifiable patient information.
2. Nurses must observe ethically prescribed professional patient-nurse boundaries.
3. Nurses should understand that patients, colleagues, organizations, and employers may
view postings.
4. Nurses should take advantage of privacy settings and seek to separate personal and
professional information online.
5. Nurses should bring content that could harm a patient’s privacy, rights, or welfare to the
attention of appropriate authorities.
6. Nurses should participate in developing organizational policies governing online conduct.
(ANA, 2019).
Our workplace’s social media policy consists of the employee not being allowed to access
any social media network on the company’s or own devices during work hours. Also, if any
employee posts on social media at the workplace with the company name or logo visible or
anything inappropriate, disciplinary actions will occur. Our workplace has a Facebook page,
which has a company administrator, who posts company photos and patient testimonies. My
impression is social media plays a large part in healthcare by way of company marketing,
employee testaments, company information, and patient’s testimonies. Social media plays a
valuable role in my online education. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not
expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (1 Corinthians 10:23, KJV).
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References
American Nursing Association, (2019), Social Media. Retrieved March 24, 2019,
https://www.nursingworld.org/social/.
Holy Bible: King James Version, (KJV).
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (Eds). Health informatics: An interprofessional approach (2nd ed.,
pp. 220-240). St. Louis: Elsevier.
Pentescu, A., Cetina, I., Orzan, G., (2015). Social Media’s Impact on Healthcare Services.
Procedia Economics and Finance. 27, 646-651 //doi:
-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1016/522125671(15)010448.
www.sciencedirect.comezproxy.libery.edu.
Smailhodzic, E., Hooijsma, W., Boonstra, A., & Langley, D. J. (2016). Social media use in
healthcare: A systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with
healthcare professionals. BMC Health Services Research, 16(1), 442.
doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1691-0.
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