I've seen some of my friends who've updated their Facebook or Myspace from their phone when they were at work. I even had a student last year who was doing her rotation with our service and I saw her update hers while she was at the hospital and I was off that day and happened to be on FB! I told her the next time I saw her that while I wasn't going to hold a first offense against her, it could be perceived as unprofessional by some and she should probably wait till she's either off work or at least on break (and mention being on break in the posting).
Another RN friend posted some of her 3 AM ICU toga party pictures a few months ago. While I got a kick out of them knowing that some things never change (I always had fun working nights there), I would be concerned if I was a patient or family member and saw pictures of the nurses at work goofing off. I mean, you can't deny it if there's a picture!
Also, think about who all you are friends with on MS/FB and remember that they can see everything you post and the general public can see it too if your profile is not private. My sister-in-law works for a physician who had her checking out job applicants' MySpace or Facebook pages if she could find them. Several of my former co-workers are friends on FB with their boss. When I still worked there I was always nervous that she'd send me a friend request because I did not trust her. I am friends with my current boss as but she actually is a friend. She will sometimes comment on my updates, like when I put a :-( after I say I'm going back to work after 5 days off. I think she knows it's not that I don't like my job, I just like being off with my family, but still, it's all about perception.
Several years ago, before my previous hospital blocked any Internet sites at work, I was looking at my Myspace on my lunch break at the nurse's station. We almost never had enough staff to cover meal breaks and our routine was generally to go get food and eat at the desk. If a patient needed something, someone who wasn't eating would take care of it if possible. Anyway, I had allowed family to come in between visiting hours and there were several in the room singing to my patient. Suddenly he went into a dysrhythmia. I quickly rushed into the room, assessed him, tried a couple of different tricks to see if I could get it to break and paged the doctor who called me back quickly and gave me orders. I went to the OmniCell and got the med and stopped at the computer to use the calculator to doublecheck the dosage (it was weight-based and I'd lost my pocket calculator). The family saw me stop at the computer and they had seen me looking at my Myspace while I'd been eating, so they assumed that I stopped to look at one more thing on Myspace instead of taking care of the patient. They complained to the charge nurse and I had to report off to another nurse at 3 and pick up another team for 4 hours. All because of perception.
I learned a couple of lessons from that experience:
1. Bending the rules for a family will bite you in the a$$.
2. Take your lunch break away from the unit, even if it's difficult to find coverage. Force them to cover for you.
3. Don't look at personal stuff on the Internet at work.
4. Don't lose your calculator. I've also had people think I'm texting if I used the calculator on my cell phone.
While the suspension sucks, I think she's probably lucky she wasn't fired. I just hope they will be consistent about enforcing the rules. You really can go 8 or 12 hours without texting or updating your FB. It's possible.
