There was another recent posting - thread now closed - by a nurse who got in trouble over a Facebook posting. I have some direct experience with this - as a union steward - and a fair amount of second hand knowledge. Here are a few basic things to keep in mind:
1. Your Facebook "friends" may very well not be your actual friends - in every case that I've dealt with, management became aware of the offending posting when a "friend" of the poster brought it to their attention. And your privacy settings are no protection.
2. You do not have rights of "free speech" related to your work - the First Amendment protects you against the government intruding on your free speech rights - it says nothing about your employer.
3. If you are not covered by a union contract, in most parts of the US you are an at will employee and can be fired for any reason or no reason - except for a very small number of protected reasons like your age or race.
4. If you post something that would make anyone reading it think they might not get good care at your hospital, that would almost always be a legitimate reason for action against you. Here are a few real life examples: "We were so understaffed it was scary" or "If another person comes into the ER just to get narcs, I might punch them out" or "I got so frustrated with one patient I wanted to take her call light away".
Yeah, we've all had feelings like that, and we might say them to a real friend face to face - but posting them online for all to see - and, no matter what your privacy settings are, it really is for all to see - is just foolish. Save those rants for your truly private conversations.
One last note: Labor law does protect concerted activity. So if your union has a Facebook page and you were having a discussion there about how to improve staffing at your hospital, a negative comment on staffing in that context would likely be protected by law - but the exact same comment in the context of just a general rant likely would not be.
So, be careful, be smart, don't cause yourself unneeded trouble for silly reasons.
I agree we need to be careful and professional on facebook. I think this is more of a problem for the younger generation who grew up with the internet and are so used to posting pictures and having lots of friends. Facebook becomes a bragging right, I have 500 friends, are you kidding me! There is no privacy, anything you say or do can be seen by those 500 plus if they mention it who knows how many hundreds etc and pictures can be taken from your facebook and posted elsewhere by someone else.
I agree it is best to not friend coworkers, but what do you do if a coworker friends you? If you ignore them now you are going to be dealing with hurt feelings and possible work repercussions. Also I know alot of coworkers who friend supervisors as well as other coworkers. I think this is also a dangerous policy.
Just recently a person on all nurses who works as a supervisor was talking about exposing another coworker she discovered on all nurses in that case, supposedly the other coworker exposed herself by using her own picture. But regardless, this could happen to any one of us if someone were able to figure out who we were even if we posted anonymously. I think its sad that someone would use comments on all nurses to get another coworker in trouble, but there you can't trust everyone. And not everyone is your friend even if they do friend you on facebook.
Why would someone report you to management? Perhaps they are angry at you and use this passive aggressive approach to get back or they think they will look better and get ahead by exposing someone else or perhaps they genuinely believe this is the right moral thing to do. Of course I don't agree with that, a true friend would warn their friend, not try to expose them and get them in trouble. A lot of us have more acquaintances than true friends and it would be wise to realize this and not to blindly trust others.
I use Facebook to post stuff about my dog, my family, vacation, stuff I do in my yard, the fact that I went to the sold out George Strait concert last night (had, had, HAD to throw that out there - and yes, country fans, it was every bit as awesome as you think it was!!! Go on, don't mind if you hate a bit - LOL!!!) - I put absolutely nothing of any consequence on there. I am connected to one patient's page, but it regards his transplant journey and I don't post anything on there of any consequence, either. I put where I work, but I post nothing related to work. I'm careful about what I post and I keep it locked up so that only people I friend can see it and what I post - not friends of friends. And no, I don't understand why people do anything any different either.
I think they let her back in the program after she filed a lawsuit. But I think that between the placenta photos and the lawsuit, she's probably not having going to have an easy time finding a job...especially since she has a unique first name--Google would pull all the info right up in the first few search results.
I know if an applicant came to me with that name, the first thought in my mind would be, "oh, it's the placenta chick" And that doesn't cast her in a favorable light :/
Truth! Took me fourteen seconds to find her name and the picture with a Google search. And yeah, quite the unique name, I doubt there's another nurse with that name walking around so she's easily branded "Placenta nurse" who had to sue her school to be allowed to finish her program. That's a cloud that will be following her for quite some time.
Truth! Took me fourteen seconds to find her name and the picture with a Google search. And yeah, quite the unique name, I doubt there's another nurse with that name walking around so she's easily branded "Placenta nurse" who had to sue her school to be allowed to finish her program. That's a cloud that will be following her for quite some time.
While I was in school last year, one of our instructors used that news story as a warning to us and what could happen if we posted anything on FB about clinicals.
Tiger Woods was admitted to a facility in my area for his "sex addiction" and tons of nurses who worked there got fired for posting about it on Facebook. I think they thought it would be okay because it was pretty common knowledge that he was there, with news cameras trying to swarm in and all of that and people talked about it on tv. I have nothing to do with that place and I knew about it.
I also heard a lot of people got fired for looking in his chart. The Facebook thing might have been a dumb mistake, but looking in a patient's chart who doesn't belong to you is asking to get fired.
I remember awhile back a girl I went to school with posted a picture of a placenta from her clinicals on facebook. The instructor got wind of it and she was kicked out of the program - ouch 3 years gone.
Tiger Woods was admitted to a facility in my area for his "sex addiction" and tons of nurses who worked there got fired for posting about it on Facebook. I think they thought it would be okay because it was pretty common knowledge that he was there, with news cameras trying to swarm in and all of that and people talked about it on tv. I have nothing to do with that place and I knew about it.
I also heard a lot of people got fired for looking in his chart. The Facebook thing might have been a dumb mistake, but looking in a patient's chart who doesn't belong to you is asking to get fired.
I've said this before but I don't see how people can keep things so separated. I can't. Most of my friends are co-workers or former co-workers. I don't have much of a social life outside of socializing with people I work with. Even my friends from school are all nurses now so I either work with them, or know people they work with, etc.
So yes most of my friends on facebook are nurses, doctors, and auxiliary staff. I'm actually "friends" with my hospital's facebook page and comment and share things from it all the time.
I agree with the idea that you have to be smart about what you put online, but I think some people are just paranoid about it.
Granted, I don't feel the urge to bad-mouth my employer daily. Maybe if I felt oppressed or had a bad work environment it would be different.
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Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN
2,369 Posts
Because he couldn't become a patient again? Dear Heavens..