Hawkins Journal Mod 1

What is your experience with social networking or social media in your clinical or practice setting?

Why would a patient or family want to create a blog?

Why would a health care organization or individual health care provider create a blog?

My clinical practice experience with social networking or social medial is very limited. We use a computer system sparingly. Our social network is an Intranet accessible for education, assessing payroll, or personal updating for educational purposes or addressing surveys from the company. We have an email system but this is limited to supervisory staff. Our clinical communication network is word of mouth or  “The Loop” a paper newsletter the company sends out every Monday.  

I followed family blog created for their six-year-old child undergoing treatment for cancer. The family routinely updated their daughters’ procedures and progress including many fun times in her life. People from all over the country, friends, family and staff that provided her care were able to play an active part in her expedition. Everyone involved was able to offer inspiration and encouragement through this blog. It was very comforting to the family as well as those whose lives were touch by this young lady because of her sweetness and strength. I recently found out that her treatment was unsuccessful but I was blessed to have had glimpses and interaction with her and her family during her brief and courageous journey.

A health care organization or individual health care provider may use a blog to maintain or share information about that facility and their product. They can provide educational information such as techniques and health care information to the public. For the advanced practice nurse the use of informatics is important to better educate clients of their disease or mental health issues. Using valid evidence based information from credible websites is informative and very useful to the layman. Examples of this could be the Mayo Clinic, Web MD, or The World Health Organization blogs such as www.famish.org/World_Health_Organization/blogs.html created for the public to  become involved and possibly join in education or causes. Other useful blogs may include social networks such as NAMI, The Cancer Institute, The American Diabetes Association, and others like these as support systems for people who have an illness’ making an easy out reach to others for encouragement or education.