Social Media and Doxxing - Your Thoughts???

[traumaRUs]

So, I first had to look up "doxxing" which is to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.

This recently came up when I read about Joshua Strickland, an RN in Louisianna who posted a selfie at the end of his first day on a new job in which he BLURRED out parts of his name tag. He vaguely mentioned a comment from a patient he had cared for that day without revealing any identifying information. He posted it to a FB group and it went viral as so many nurses could identify with his sentiment.

However, out of the thousands of supportive comments he received there was someone who felt a need to report it. So, they utilized technology to "unblur" his name tag and then reported it to his hospital.

He was fired and is currently unemployed.

So....what are your thoughts on this?

Is it okay to post selfies regarding work situations?

How about the person who reported it?

Do you know your facility policy?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

7 hours ago, Jedrnurse said:

I'm with you. I mourn the death of people having a sense of privacy, and hate that many folks are so desperate for attention and validation that they pimp out the most mundane aspects of their lives for online affirmation. (On top of that, the online community is often very vicious, given the "bravery" of their relative anonymity.)

Agree. With a degree of anonymity, civility is gone

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Even prior to HIPAA being passed into law during the mid-90's, there has always been an established rule of conduct for healthcare professionals that any conversation made between a patient and a nurse is confidential. It is privileged. It doesn't matter if the patient is not identified, these do not get discussed with people that don't have anything to do with the patient's care or the advancement of knowledge (as in for educational purpose). Discussion of these conversations in the open enters into gossip territory and when used to poke fun makes it even worse.

[pmabraham, BSN, RN]

1: Is it okay to post selfies regarding work situations?

This is extremely high risk and very dangerous action to take. Are any patients in the picture? Are any belongings of any patient or coworker in the picture? Are any visitors or other people who may not want their picture taken in the picture?

Best case, don't do it.

2: How about the person who reported it?

Two wrongs don't make a right. While #1 may show a level of a "stupid" action, given the extremes some organizations go to when receiving a report where the punishment far outweighs the wrong activity, in my opinion, the reporter was in the wrong.

3: Do you know your facility policy?

Far too strict.

[tyloo]

10 hours ago, Nurse SMS said:

I can't help but feel you aren't "getting it".

He posted this to a group that had over 270K members. Both the individual and his employer were easily identifiable. It is entirely possible/likely that nobody "reported" him and that people in his organization saw it for themselves.

He was at work, on property, discussing patients in a public forum in a way that he intended to be humorous. Problem is, most people would not want their health situation teased about, laughed at, made fun of or used for satire by the individual trusted to care for them. THAT action gave the public legitimate reason to believe that institution is okay with that behavior. Therefore the institution really had no choice but to fire him, to send a message to the public and to their employees that people aren't going to be making fun of/teasing/laughing at them if they come there for care, even if they aren't in their right mind at the time they are being cared for.

That's the material point. It was a serious error in judgment. The firing was heavy handed but far from outside the realm of a reasonable reaction in today's healthcare and social environment. This isn't a freedom of speech issue. Every one of us is free to say anything we want on any platform we want and we can't be put in jail for doing so. We can, however, suffer the consequences of our actions in all kinds of other ways. His firing was a natural consequence of laughing at/about a patient entrusted to his care in a public forum.

I agree with you. I read his original post and I remember thinking to myself that he may get into trouble for it. I wouldn’t imagine that he would be fired though.

His post was in bad taste. It was his first day on the job and he quoted his psych patient asking her if he could get her anything and I believe she said, “ you can F off and die.” Anyways he quoted her and it was meant to be cute and funny. I personally didn’t find it funny because it was a psych patient.

I’m sure from an administrator’s point of view it was best for them to cut their losses early and fire him. The post went viral, and you can trace him back to his organization.

He does have a new job, so he got back on his feet quickly.

[Lunah, MSN, RN]

3 minutes ago, tyloo said:

He does have a new job, so he got back on his feet quickly.

Oh good. I am sure he learned a valuable lesson about using social media. Glad to hear he found something new.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

10 hours ago, LovingLife123 said:

The patient wasn’t identifiable. A statement does not make them indentifiable. I’m also referring to the plethora of people on here that say you can say where you work on social media. It’s not true and every time something like this comes up, that statement gets made.

Last Christmas, my unit took a group photo before we stepped out on to the floor. We posted Merry Christmas from our unit. Where we worked was visible, name badges visible. That’s not a violation.

In most states, you can be fired for anything. Any employer can decide to fire you for any reason. That’s what happened here. I read that an ER nurse took issue and reported it up. It was malicious and wrong for that nurse to do that.

There was a recent thread about posting stories that your facility does on your social media. People were saying it’s a Violation to do that when it’s not. That’s why I’m saying many don’t understand HIPAA. This was not a violation. This was more about people disagreeing with what he posted.

To me, that’s a slippery slope. Employers shouldn’t be able to govern our every move. But it’s becoming that way because every body screams HIPAA!!!

Yes its a slippery slope and one no one wants to go down!

[Guest219794]

14 hours ago, Nurse SMS said:

I can't help but feel you aren't "getting it".

He posted this to a group that had over 270K members. Both the individual and his employer were easily identifiable. It is entirely possible/likely that nobody "reported" him and that people in his organization saw it for themselves.

He was at work, on property, discussing patients in a public forum in a way that he intended to be humorous. Problem is, most people would not want their health situation teased about, laughed at, made fun of or used for satire by the individual trusted to care for them. THAT action gave the public legitimate reason to believe that institution is okay with that behavior. Therefore the institution really had no choice but to fire him, to send a message to the public and to their employees that people aren't going to be making fun of/teasing/laughing at them if they come there for care, even if they aren't in their right mind at the time they are being cared for.

That's the material point. It was a serious error in judgment. The firing was heavy handed but far from outside the realm of a reasonable reaction in today's healthcare and social environment. This isn't a freedom of speech issue. Every one of us is free to say anything we want on any platform we want and we can't be put in jail for doing so. We can, however, suffer the consequences of our actions in all kinds of other ways. His firing was a natural consequence of laughing at/about a patient entrusted to his care in a public forum.

I agree with your rationale and general sentiment. I disagree strongly that the institution had no choice but to fire him. They could have warned him disciplined him, used his case to educate others.... No question he screwed up, but I do think there there are more positive ways to deal with this than fire him

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

16 hours ago, hherrn said:

I agree with your rationale and general sentiment. I disagree strongly that the institution had no choice but to fire him. They could have warned him disciplined him, used his case to educate others.... No question he screwed up, but I do think there there are more positive ways to deal with this than fire him

I agree it was heavy handed, but I follow their logic. Now that video is out there, forever, with their logo on it and a nurse employed by them poking fun at a patient. The follow up question will be what the facility did about it. The only thing as publically visible as the post is for that person not to be working there anymore.

[NightNerd, MSN, RN]

Mmmmm...Knowing the nature of the post now, I kind of see it both ways. Still think firing him was too much, though glad to hear he's working again. I get why that's not an image and quotation the hospital would want associated with themselves; however, they essentially fired a man for using humor to cope with patient hostility - which probably most of us do from time to time. Being told to eff off and die by a patient is pretty tame by comparison to some things that happen to nurses, but it was his first day and maybe it took him back a bit and he wanted to share.

This would have been a great opportunity to re-educate staff regarding appropriate social media use, while also reinforcing to the public, "Guys, this photo may have been in poor taste, but it makes it clear that our nurses don't like to be sweated at. So, please don't do that." Kinda address a couple of issues with one incident, you know? (I get that this is never a thing that would happen, but this hospital could have looked so much better after this than they do now.)

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

45 minutes ago, NightNerd said:

Mmmmm...Knowing the nature of the post now, I kind of see it both ways. Still think firing him was too much, though glad to hear he's working again. I get why that's not an image and quotation the hospital would want associated with themselves; however, they essentially fired a man for using humor to cope with patient hostility - which probably most of us do from time to time. Being told to eff off and die by a patient is pretty tame by comparison to some things that happen to nurses, but it was his first day and maybe it took him back a bit and he wanted to share.

This would have been a great opportunity to re-educate staff regarding appropriate social media use, while also reinforcing to the public, "Guys, this photo may have been in poor taste, but it makes it clear that our nurses don't like to be sweated at. So, please don't do that." Kinda address a couple of issues with one incident, you know? (I get that this is never a thing that would happen, but this hospital could have looked so much better after this than they do now.)

I agree with most of this, but his error wasn't in using humor to cope. It was making a public post of it that did him in. We all use humor. We don't all put it out there for general viewing by healthcare consumers with a very limited view on what we do.

I agree that this could have been used to educate the public rather than just firing him.

[Waiting for Retirement]

2 hours ago, Nurse SMS said:

/ It was making a public post of it that did him in. We all use humor. We don't all put it out there for general viewing by healthcare consumers with a very limited view on what we do.

I shudder to think what anyone from "the public" would think if they could be a fly on the wall of any break room of any nursing unit I've ever worked on!

[NightNerd, MSN, RN]

2 hours ago, Nurse SMS said:

I agree with most of this, but his error wasn't in using humor to cope. It was making a public post of it that did him in. We all use humor. We don't all put it out there for general viewing by healthcare consumers with a very limited view on what we do.

I agree that this could have been used to educate the public rather than just firing him.

I can agree with a lot of what you're saying. I'm not saying that it was a good idea to include his own likeness, especially not in a photo with the hospital logo, in his efforts to cope using humor. That part was absolutely a mistake. However, as an avid lover of nurse memes, I guess I understand the impulse to share these things online with other nurses, so it's not quite as scandalizing to me that someone would think to post something like this nurse did. It was clumsy. It needed to be corrected. He shouldn't have been terminated.

I also think that the general public's limited awareness of the harassment and/or abuse that nurses face at work is part of the problem, as are many hospitals' nonchalant responses to it. Would I venture too far to say that perhaps the photo struck a chord with that particular hospital because it's an inconvenient reminder that this issue still needs attention? This is a somewhat common experience for the workers who staff hospital floors, and I think anyone who has worked in customer service knows it sucks to be yelled at or cursed at. Why conceal the reality of that?

I'm obviously being very led by personal feelings in this discussion, lol, not gonna deny it. There's a lot to unpack with this story!