Will you add your patient in facebook?

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If a patient/former patient of yours (I’m not talking about a patient who happens to also be your friend from way way back or someone who is a family friend-----I’m talking about a patient you met initially on your floor as a nurse) add you in his/her facebook account, would you accept it? Why or why not? Just curious..........

Specializes in Adolescent Psych, PICU.

No I wouldn't. I work in psych now and get FB requests all the time from former patients and I have to just ignore them.

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Specializes in WOC, Hospice, Home Health.
The patient-nurse relationship is a professional one and that's the way I want to keep it.

This. When I'm working I want them to see me as ProBeeRN, the nurse. If I become known to them as ProBeeRN, their facebook/ personal friend, then that blurs waaaay too many lines for me. I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to _______ (pack their wound, assess them, change their catheter, check their butt, etc)-- NOT things that I do with my friends. We have a hard enough time being taken seriously as professionals without adding social networking to the nurse-patient relationship.

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Not worth the headache and hassle if anything goes down. A BIG NO.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

No way I'd friend a patient...and it's not so much because of the potential HIPAA violations and the desire for personal life/professional life seperation, as it is the fact that I work in a psychiatric hospital :)

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Geriatrics, LTC.

no way

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Specializes in ob/gyn med /surg.

no...

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Of course not. Why would I be interested in the trivia of a person who is not an actual friend or good acquaintance in real life? My facebook is cluttered enough.

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Specializes in CTICU.

Absolutely not. I don't even have my profile searchable.

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And I don't want to know the goings on of your life.

Besides, I already don't have enough time for the people in my life who really matter to me.

Uh...okay:confused:

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.

So far, not a single "yes" vote, I don't think.

I can't imagine what would be the motivator to do so.

The nurse-patient relationship is an artificially intimate one and I guess it's natural that some patients would want to build on that... kind of like pts who crush on their therapists.

For the nurse, though... no way.

I just remembered way back in the day, though, I was in the hospital for several weeks due to an MVA and when I left one of the young nurses gave me a card that included her phone number.

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
Uh...okay:confused:
Not "you" as in Katie5, "you" as in my patient wanting to "friend" me. :)
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Not "you" as in Katie5 "you" as in my patient wanting to "friend" me. :)[/quote']

Ah...I knew that;)

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