Social media: a new way to care and communicate.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Anderson, Kathryn
• Date: 01 September 2012

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Social media's rise to prominence is changing the way we communicate with each other at a rapid rate. With the dick of a button we can send and receive information instantly that can be shared with thousands of others worldwide. While many industries have embraced the benefits of social media, health care has been slow to jump on board. Kathryn Anderson investigates the opportunities and the risks social media can bring to health care and the nursing and midwifery professions.

Patient care and social media

Social media has fast become a mainstream and convenient way for people to communicate. With the ability to gain instant information and scope for voice on a global scale, the use of social media has created a fundamental shift in our expectations in the community, and with each other.

The impact of this online phenomenon has not escaped the health care industry. Easy access to health information and advice has created a new public perspective about how health care is delivered, resulting in new challenges and opportunities for health professionals to provide care to their patients.

Hugh Stephens is an advisory Board Member for the Mayo Clinic Centre for Social Media, which aims to accelerate effective applications of social media tools to create deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, health professionals and patients. According to Mr Stephens, the health industry is yet to fully embrace the use of social media and, as a result, technology used by patients and clients has far surpassed beyond what health care is currently comfortable using. "It's a real challenge for clinicians. They may not be comfortable using it, but at the same time there are currently less evidence-based messages about health care being sent out through social media."

Mr Stephens says if health professionals were to use social media to its potential, patient care would be greatly enriched. "Holistic patient care is about treating the patient and their sociological condition, which goes beyond treating their medical diagnosis. It's also about what happens in their family lives, health promotion and all those sort of impacts where there is a real place for social media to be used to provide health care to individuals."

Digital strategy company Bendalls Group Managing Director Fi Bendall says why the health care industry has failed to embrace social media is because of the enormous challenge of tackling confidentiality. "Regardless, health care needs to get involved. It's up to the industry to do something, to drive what's happening, because what's currently happening is health messages are being sent out by other people rather than the health professionals."

One of the most popular and common uses of social media and the internet is to self diagnose symptoms of illness, according to Ms Bendall. "Dr Google is becoming quite an issue in health care. A scary statistic from Microsoft suggested 96% of all Australians look up their symptoms online before they see any doctor or health care professional. The problem with this is we can research through the internet, work out what we think is wrong with us and diagnose ourselves with a brain tumour when actually we may only have a headache. What also makes this statistic more alarming is that only 37% of health information on the internet is correct."

The use of the internet as a source of health information is not likely to change, Ms Bendall says. "This is a behavioural shift we are observing that few organisations are yet to come to terms with. But it is incredibly important that the health industry recognises this, because of the internet the role of the health professional with patients has changed; patients' perception of health care has changed and that brings all sorts of problems as well as all sorts of opportunities to bear on health professionals' roles and jobs."

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