Social Networking Policy
Social networking sites can be an effective way to keep in touch with colleagues. Social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Flickr have grown in popularity and application, allowing users to post content and share with virtually anyone. Organizations, including healthcare institutions, are rapidly integrating the use of social media into their education, outreach and marketing strategies.
While this creates new opportunities for communication and collaboration, it also creates vulnerabilities for individuals and institutions, especially those involved in the healthcare environment. Depending on our privacy settings, literally anyone with access to the internet can see our profiles, photos, and posted opinions, and can share them anywhere. The potential impact on professional careers and professions is an important consideration.
The UW School of Nursing Social Media Policy:
- summarizes existing UW and UW School of Nursing policies that apply to the use of social media
- incorporates the UW Medicine policy limiting the use of social media in hospital and clinic spaces, and
- outlines best practice guidelines for UW School of Nursing faculty, staff, trainees, students and volunteers who participate in social networking sites and share social media in other areas where such use is permitted
Social Media includes text, images, audio and video communicated via such tools as:
- blogs, and micro-blogs such as Twitter
- social networks, such as Facebook
- professional networks, such as LinkedIn
- video sharing, such as YouTube and vlogs (video weblogs)
- audio sharing, such as podcasts
- photo sharing, such as Flickr and Photobucket
- social bookmarking, such as Digg and Reddit
- public comment sections on webpages (such as those for online news sites)