Categories: Scrubs

Should nurses sign off of Facebook?

Professionalism
There’s also the issue of professionalism. In the UK, nurses were disciplined for posting photographs of a food fight. Four nursing students in the United States were dismissed from nursing school for posting pictures they took of a placenta during a lab session. A few nurses were supposedly suspended for blowing up glove balloons at work and posting the photos. And there are ongoing debates about whether or not it’s professional for nurses to befriend patients and patients’ relatives on Facebook. There’s no question that it does happen, but think about it. Do you want your patients to know what you do in your private life? Do you want them to know that you were at a party the other night and had a hangover at work? And how are these friendships with your patients going to come across to others—other patients, coworkers, supervisors, physicians, your “real friends,” etc.—if they find out. Do you think your behavior will be perceived as professional? Likely not.

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Cynthia Dusseault

Cynthia Dusseault is a professional freelance writer with both a health and an education background. A former medical radiation technologist and elementary school teacher, she realized that no matter what she did, she was drawn to any task that involved writing, so she decided, over a decade ago, to write full-time. Since then, she has written for a variety of magazines and websites including Nursing PRN, National Review of Medicine, University Affairs, Your Health, Education Leaders Today, Today's Parent, Children's Playmate, WeightWatchers.ca and many more. She has written about topics such as asthma, genital herpes, circumcision, teleradiology, body art, learning disabilities and exercise trends, and she absolutely adores the fact that writing—particularly doing the research for the articles she writes—makes her a lifelong learner.