Social Media Role Modeling

[jhoilman]

Nursing school administrators do a great job telling students and faculty what not to do with social media, but what about what can be done with social media?

Do you model positive social media use? Does your program include curriculum that addresses the use of social media by nursing students?

[Jory, MSN, APRN, CNM]

Nursing school administrators do a great job telling students and faculty what not to do with social media, but what about what can be done with social media?

Do you model positive social media use? Does your program include curriculum that addresses the use of social media by nursing students?

Nope..more like a policy.

These are college students, not high school. They are told not to discuss clinicals on social media, reference the school or facility in a negative way, or they are subject to disciplinary action.

They are told this in orientation and they are only told once. Usually the first time a student gets in trouble the word gets out. That stops it.

As far as other things they post themselves? We warn them to be careful about what is searchable on the internet, if it costs them a job later, that's on them.

All you can do is warn them.

[Whispera, MSN, RN]

One instructor I know had a class activity on Facebook. The instructor made an account in which she was a patient and the students interacted with her and each other to do nursely things.

I also know some schools have classes in Second Life. I think that will be a big thing in the future.

[CraigB-RN, MSN, RN]

Yes;

I try to present social media or I prefer Web 2.0 as tools. Like any tool, it can be used wrong. My student get my blog, and my twitter feed and I try to be an active example. I use cased pulled from twitter on how better choices could be made showing poor behavior and good behavior. Twitter and facebook users like @TheNursePath are good examples and I try to steer students that direction.

Web 2.0 and Social Media is to valuable a tool to just say "Don't use it" or "Be Careful"

For example, you can get feeds from conferences that you couldn't attend, there are discussions on important topics that can affect our carreers as nurses and the delivery of patient care. We can get direct info from the people who wrote the book. I've had Patricia Benner respond directly to posts.

We need to get our students heading down the straight and narrow path now and not wait till they graduate or get in trouble.