E-Professionalism
Social Networking Guidelines and Responsible Internet Use
You may access and use Protected Health Information (PHI), or patient information, in the context of treating your patients. Any PHI you receive is confidential, and may not be used or disclosed for any other purpose. Redacted information may be used for case studies or classroom activities, but check with your clinical instructor to insure confidentiality is protected.
No patient information may be downloaded into another computer or electronic device.
No software or unauthorized material may be downloaded onto the hospital computers.
You may not take photographs of patients or other visitors, except for caregiver training, and with written permission of all parties.
Cell phone usage is not permitted on the floors or during patient treatment.
Searching the internet: Computers may be used to access the Internet for information about general medical conditions, community resources, and a wide variety of other applications. Other large portions of the Internet have no application to your work. Please do not access these sites from the hospital. Our IT systems and services are critical to our patient care and our business, and we need to make sure it is used for business purposes.
Social Networking:
- The consensus of fieldwork educators in our department is that we should not become electronic “friends” with interns, volunteers or students while they are here as students.
- Please respect the clinical internship site and colleagues, and do not post information on a social networking site about the internship that you would not feel comfortable with your fieldwork educator or the Clinical Education Coordinator reading.
- Never post information about a patient on a social networking site.
- Use appropriate networking sites for support, assessment and intervention ideas, developing collaborative or mentoring relationships, and asking general questions. Explore the use of electronic technology for professional development: join electronic article reviews/journal clubs, list-serves and other community resources.