Case Study: Social Media Policy

Case Study: Social Media Policy

Case Study: Social Media Policy

Scenario One: You have recently been promoted to charge nurse for the day shift in your department. As a result of this promotion, your former peers are now reporting directly to you. You have been working in your setting for five years and consider many of these peers to be your friends. The way that one of your friends’ posts on social media sites has always bothered you. Many times, her comments are inappropriate, discussing her negative feelings about “ignorant superiors” and “annoying patients.” You also know that she frequently accesses these sites for extended periods of time while patients are waiting to be helped. Now that she reports directly to you, how do you address this? If your workplace does not have a formal policy on social media use, how can you adapt her behaviors to align with the expectations of nursing professionalism?

Post an explanation of the possible social, ethical, and/or legal ramifications of your assigned scenario.

Advances are happening almost every time a person blinks and with these come improvements and increased availability of communicating in a socially controlled environment, such as Social media sites in this scenario. Unfortunately, the friend in this story is violating her ethical code of nursing in many means. According to Lussier and Hendon, “ethics is a set of moral principles or values which is concerned with the righteousness or wrongness of human behavior and which guides your conduct in relation to others” (2018, p. 543). To further justify an ethical dilemma, this scenario also breaches the American Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics for Nurses, which states “the nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to preserve the integrity and safety, to maintain competence, and to continue personal and professional growth” (Issues & Answers, 2011). The charge nurses’ friend has lost reality with appropriate moral, distinguishing right from wrong in regards to social media. Not only has she portrayed the role of a bully to her employee superiors but patients as well, thus expressing concern in moral development (Lussier & Hendon, 2018). As a nurse leader, it is critical to remove the “friendship” hat and place the leadership hat on to provide structured guidance to address this ethical issue.

Explain the policy your current or past workplace has on the use of social technologies and how effective you believe the policy is. If your workplace does not have a policy, explain what the accepted practices or expectations are for your setting. Has lack of policy led to any problems? Support your responses by referencing authentic examples from the workplace and this week’s Learning Resources as appropriate.

Leadership is almost like becoming a detective, allowing one to see the picture from multiple views. It might be most helpful to first question, what is contributing to the bullying behavior? A work environment can trigger the aggression of a bully, often associated with increased stress, inadequate training, organizational uncertainty, pressure from superiors, and targets unreachable (Barton et al., 2011). Moreover, nursing leaders can utilize the integrated ethical problem-solving model that includes assessing the problem, identifying the problem, analyzing and selecting the best alternative, and a method for evaluation (Marquis & Huston, 2017). One source to investigate is the organizations’ current workplace policy on social technology. The health department where I work has a Social Media policy and I would rate it as extremely detailed and practical. It includes specific guidelines, outlying definitions, procedures when using social media, comments policy, etiquette, all referencing the department’s Code of Ethics Policy. Any information posted on social media networks on behalf of the organization must comply with the company’s confidentiality statement, HIPAA, and the Department’s Code of Ethics. In the event, an employee violates the Social Media Policy, the Disciplinary Measures outlined in the Employee Handbook is followed, again, which is descriptive in the types of action grounds for discipline.

In contrast, a Social Media policy only works to its ability if all staff understand the policy, know the policy exists, and then can build trust by upholding the policy. A proper introduction to new protocols positively affects communication by resolving conflict (Brinkert, 2010). Almost two years ago, our company lost its’ Human Resources Director due to budget cuts in public health. With this dissolving position, our Workforce Development, including policies and procedures, went by the wayside. Fortunately, there have been no social media issues to date. After reviewing this weeks’ literature, I vow to address the inconsistencies of employees, especially new ones to our health department, have a path to follow on guidance of where policies are located, which policies exist, and a tracking system to capture reviewing and acknowledgment of said policies; Action I would review with the nurse disobeying social media. Common myths and misunderstanding about social media usage are eliminated when all staff is aware of this policy specific occurrence (Cronquist & Spector, 2011). It would be hard to have a structured base of leadership or reprimand the friend in Scenario One if the Human Resources department fell short of their duties and had no documentation of the employee reviewing the Social Media policy.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

• Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
• Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
• One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
• I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

• Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
• In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
• Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
• Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

• Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
• Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
• I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

• I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
• As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
• It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

 

LopesWrite Policy

• For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
• Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
• Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
• Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

• The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
• Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
• If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
• I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
• As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

• Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: 
  • Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
  • Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.