patient friend request on Facebook

Published

I am wondering what anyone thinks about nurses adding patients as friends on Facebook? Many of the people on my friends list on Facebook are nurses I work with. We have a patient who get's admitted into the hospital frequently and is always on my floor. We have all taken care of her at some time or another so I'm sure she feels very familiar with us. Just recently one of the nurses accepted a friend request from this patient. I had to change all my privacy settings on facebook because I didn't feel it was appropiate for this patient to be able to see what goes on in my personal life. (not that there is anything going on in my personal life but it's just the point) Now there are 3 nurses who have added this patient to their friends list. If any of you know how facebook works depending on your privacy settings you can see your friends list of friends which means this patient can see all the other nurses, family members ,ect (even my nurse manager is on our friends list) I'm sure this patient will probably go down the list and send us all friend requests, however I do not feel comfortable adding her as my friend. I do not want her to feel bad about that but as I've said I don't feel it's professional. Any thoughts on this?

Specializes in Home Health.

Like everyone has already said, ABSOLUTELY NOT! If a pt is a frequent flier, then that's doubly true for me. It's a lot more difficult to be objective and make prudent decisions regarding your pt's care if you see them as more than a pt. This is the primary reason why I refuse to care for anyone I know from my personal life.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

if you have to question it you probably already know the answer

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Cardiac/Tele/CVICU.

No, no, no, and NO!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.

I vote it depends. Normally, I would NOT. For instance, the one hospital I work at is on a psych unit. NO WAY would I accept any of the patients friend requests. I wouldn't do this if I lived in a city, either.

But the other hospital... It is super small town here (think 1,200 people) and everyone knows everyone, knows where everyone lives, knows what church you belong to, etc. The patients are your neighbors and the people you see at the grocery store on a daily basis, go to church with, work with, etc. So in that case, I would. It would be weird to not accept them when they are in my life anyway! I don't put up status updates like "my job sucks" or anything work related, so I really don't have much to hide. Everyone local already knows my husbands name, what he does for a living, where we live, how many kids we have, etc.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

I agree with the person who said to just "block" the patient (read more about this and how to do it here: Help | Facebook ). This way the person can't search you, see your name on others' lists of friends, nor will they see your posts on your friends' pages.

If they've already sent you a friend request, just click "ignore" and then go block them.

If they ask you why you didn't accept their request, rather than say your employer won't allow it (because obviously other employees have already done it) say that you're afraid of being charged with a HIPAA violation and you can't afford to put your license in jeopardy. If pressed further, comment about having heard about a colleague who had this type of thing happen, and you're just not willing to take the chance.

They don't get a message when you ignore their request or anything, so chances are they won't even notice, unless they simply don't have that many people on their list to keep track of.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

I agree with the previous posters that a patient being a FB friend probably isn't the best idea...BUT with the exception of, there isn't anything on my FB profile that is extremely "personal", so I myself would probably be fine with it. It's not like I'm inviting them over to my house for dinner or something. There are MILLIONS of people on FB. There are pictures of my daughter and such, and information about what I like/dislike, but as long as I knew that the person was a good and decent human being, I don't think I would have such an issue with it. I wouldn't add someone that I didn't know at all, but it doesn't seem to be a huge issue for me.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

What about a hospice patient's wife? I can see Gooey and Tanzanite's point about living in a small town.

It would be very hard to not have local friends on FB because sooner or later they will show up in the local hospital.

But I don't think I would be "friends" with a patient that I didn't already have a friendship with. Does that make sense? I can see in a larger town and larger hospital, letting a pt be a FB friend could be very dangerous or at least annoying.

There was one patient, kind of a local poet laureate, who was in our LTC and needed acute care. I was his nurse and we ended up talking a lot about books and such. He was in his 80's. After he went back to the LTC, he got my phone number and started calling me at home to talk. I finally stopped answering the phone when he called and after a few months he quit. His doc said he had a crush on me. :rolleyes: Great . . . . :o

steph

Up Vote Up Vote ×

i can understand you not wanting to accept the person because you dont feel comfortable but in reality anybody can be a patient God forbid if something happened to you youd need to be a patient. so the whole patient things not a big deal to me its just how comfortable you feel accepting the person friend request. keep in mind face book friends are not your real friends.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Tele.
i can understand you not wanting to accept the person because you dont feel comfortable but in reality anybody can be a patient God forbid if something happened to you youd need to be a patient. so the whole patient things not a big deal to me its just how comfortable you feel accepting the person friend request. keep in mind face book friends are not your real friends.

I agree! I never post any rude comments or dumb things, or even pictures of my vacations on my facebook account as many people I know from work are there.

I think that eventually I will erase my account. I kept it because I have a few people from HS that live in other states and cities that I would like to keep in touch with, and look at their pics.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

My biggest pet peeve is my coworkers that "friend" patients, and then go and post things like, "Sitting at work bored!" as their status. Now I'm not saying that every second of every day is action packed, but patients/families already think we're "not doing anything" when we're at the computer charting. So just what we need, is patients/families knowing that at one point in time someone was able to go on Facebook, so obviously, we have all the time in the world.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in NICU.

wow, blocking people?! are you that scared of your patient knowing what your favorite movie is?

You all make it sound as if you've got deep dark secrets on your facebook page that you only want your close friends to see. YOU control what goes on and stays on your facebook page. YOU can control the amount of information seen by specific people. YOU can make your profile as detailed or not as you're comfortable with.

Certainly I'm not saying you should allow all your patients to be your facebook friend, but if you've established a long time connection with them already, I don't see the harm. Like someone else said, you're not inviting them over to your house for dinner. They still don't know where you live or your phone number, etc.

I don't know...maybe it's a generation thing.. :twocents:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Geriatrics, Adult Psych, Peds HH.

DO NOT add patients as friends. We had a pretty nasty issue at our facility not long ago regarding Facebook friends.

Long story short, one of our patients is alert, and spends a lot of time in the multimedia center downstairs playing around on Facebook. He took the time to look up and friend request a lot of the staff on his page. Most people accepted. One night, we all went out for a co-workers birthday, nothing major, just drinks and dancing. One of the CNAs put as her status "out with the >>>>> Crew having drinks" or something along those lines. Well, the patient read it and then the family saw it, and it turned into a complaint to administration that the "staff was out getting drunk", "coming to work hungover..." really got blown out of proportion.

Administration doesn't want anything that could possibly make them look bad and won't hesitate to terminate or discipline you if you're potentially the cause of it. While your Facebook page may seem innocuous to you, your patient may not be pleased to see a picture of you and your husband clutching drinks in your hand in the back of a limo on NYE while your friend is throwing up in the corner of the photo into a bucket.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion