Social Media And Health Care Essay

Social media has become a platform for communication and expression in healthcare has become rapidly popular and has changed face-to face or telephone communication to the variety of social media applications available today (Cain &Fink, 2010). Social media is defined as the use of cell phones, email, and Internet based applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (Butts & Rich, 2016). Social media has added a new demension to health care as a means of patients and health care professionals to communicate about health care issues, improving health outcomes (Moorhead, Hazlett, Harrison, Caroll, Irwin & Hoving, 2013). Like the general public, social media has become an outlet for healthcare professionals as a means of communication and outlet and has shown to be with its benefits as well as negative consequences (Butts & Rich, 2016). Because 80% of Americans obtain health care information from online resources, social media becomes a tool that should be examined ethically. In fact a 45% of people surveryed stated that information on social media would afferct their decision to seek a second opinon and an additional 40% of people use the information from social media to cope with chronic conditions (Norton & Strauss, 2013). Theses statistics lead to question the ethics of those positing information, specifically healthcare professionals as they shape the health outcomes of readers and followers. Further more, social media brings …show more content…
In the terms of healthcare professionals, privacy is legally bound the the professions with the HIPPA Act, which keeps healthcare professionals accountable for a patient’s privacy (Butts and Rich, 2016). Additionally, nurses, are bound by the code of ethics provision for to protect the privacy of a patient, family or community (Butts & Rich,