To blog, or not to blog, . . . that is the question!

1. Why would a patient want to create a blog? What might they gain from this?

Many patients that I know have created blogs to help keep their family and friends up-to-date with their condition. One of my husband's close friends was inundated with calls following his diagnosis of terminal cancer. He and his children chose to then create a blog. They did this for the following reasons:

a) To keep family and friends up to date with his progressive cancer
b) As a record of his thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes for his children and grandchildren.
c) To preserve time for their family to spend together by protecting their father's time that he had left and directing all queries to the blog.

The blog was updated daily in the beginning and then weekly. Several people commented and followed the blog. Our friend's wife did not enjoy the blog so much as she thought it was an invasion of privacy into their family's life, however, she was grateful to have a record of the events and it truly did fulfill the goal of cutting down on the number of calls that they received so that she could concentrate on caring for her sweet husband.

An unintended consequence of starting the blog was that there were several strangers that started following his blog. Many were people who lost family members from cancer. They offered support and encouragement.

Our friend battled his cancer bravely and through his blog, was an inspiration to many.

http://www.richardloser.blogspot.com

2. Why would a health care provider create a blog?

The following are several reasons I would think a health care provider might create a blog:

a) To keep patients and clients updated with the issues surrounding the health care provider's practice.
b) To provide a social media support group for patients.
c) As an educational tool to help teach patients about various conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, CHF, etc.
d) To network with other professionals.

The following is a link to an APRN blog:

http://arnp.blogspot.com

3. What are ethical considerations when blogging on a public website, such as we've used for this class?

a) Anyone can get on the site and may possibly try to steal personal information from those participating in the blog.
b) It is not secure and personal information may be leaked without the people involved being aware of this breach of privacy.
c) Even when a blog is deleted, the information contained in the deleted blog still remains archived (University of Washington, n.d.).
d) The opinions and perspectives that we share online are open to everyone and can be misconstrued or misused without our knowledge which could have dire consequences (University of Washington, n.d.). One example that the University of Washington used was that a potential employer may "Google" a the job seeker and find something derogatory that the job seeker said on a personal network or blog that did not put that job seeker in a good light (University of Washington, n.d.).

There are many things that can be done to make blogging safe, such as making the blog private and using a nickname or some other name that would mask the true identity of the author. Overall however, I feel that blogging is an wonderful tool that can be utilized as a journal, or means of keeping in touch with family and friends. Professionally I think blogs may be useful for education and as a support group tool.

Reference:
University of Washington. (n.d.) Ethical issues of blogs. Retrieved July 27, 2010 from mywebspace.wisc.edu/avee/web/blog_ethics.html.

"To Err is Human" . . . and I am definitely human!

From the recent readings on clinical decision making--I would have to say that over my 10+ years of nursing, I have learned many very important things that help me make decisions in my nursing care. I would probably put myself in the category of proficient to expert nurse. I often look at the data and track important trends, work by experience and even follow intuition on occasion. I have learned how to read people and form collegial relationships with individuals in a very short period of time. However, I am not naive enough to say that all my decisions have been 100% accurate. I am grateful for the Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools that are being developed for use by nurses. These CDS will help to keep the standard of care for patients consistent and take out the subjectivity that exists between nurses with varying degrees of experience. They help to guide our decisions and remind us of options that we may have overlooked. I am excited for the future of CDS in medicine and see the value that it will provide especially pertaining to patient safety and efficiency in patient care. Someday, perhaps I would be interested in developing such a system--someday when I have time . . . would be a great puzzle . . . and I love puzzles!