Module 5

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

Patients may want to create a blog based on their medical experiences, allowing them to share with others their challenges and experiences. This is an excellent way to offer support to others who are newly diagnosed with a similar condition (Hebda & Czar, 2009).

A very good friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She created a blog and posted updates one or two times a week. This helped her keep her family and friends informed of her experiences and her progress with her surgery and chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery. She has many, many family members and friends who all wanted to know how she was doing and they would call her often. This was a good way to keep all informed and decrease the amount of phone calls she was receiving. She told me that it was also a sort of journal for her and she has been able to look back on her progress and feel successful in her journey down that road.

Why would a health care provider create a blog?

A health care provider may create a blog to communicate with other professionals, manage and share knowledge, mitigate error and support decision making using this technology. Improvement in patient care can be achieved through the collaboration of healthcare professionals, the sharing of knowledge and active discussion through Internet-based platforms such as blogs (Hebda & Czar, 2009).

As students in this course, we have created this blog and have been able to post to it often. I have recieved feedback from my instructors and from other students on my entries and feel I have learned a great deal from this experience.

What are ethical considerations when blogging on a public website?

Clinical blogs are password protected to prevent inadvertent disclosure of someones identity. It is important to keep in mind the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to respect and protect privacy (Hebda & Czar, 2009). Blogs allow users to post comments to entries as long as the proper "netiquette" is observed (Saba & McCormick, 2006).



References:



Hebda, T., Czar, P. (2009). Handbook of Informatics for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals (4th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall



Saba, V. K., McCormick, K. A. (2006). essentials of Nursing Informatics (4th ed). McGraw-Hill, Medical Publishing Division