National Institutes of Health
- Medical social network and website.
- Collection, generalization, processing, and analysis of medical information.
- Practical strategies for promoting public health.
- Main goal: to improve public health.
National Institutes of Health is a medical website for organizing social interactions within the medical community. Comprehensive information on the population’s health status and vital preventive measures is necessary for making well-informed decisions. The collection, generalization, processing, and analysis of such data and the development of effective strategies are its main functions. Meanwhile, the principal goal is to study public health to improve it.
Overview of Use
- Increasing awareness of the latest research.
- Receiving information regarding the environmental impact.
- Enhancing the efficiency of treatment planning.
- Participating in events related to healthcare.
This website is a useful source of information for doctors. Alongside the public health data, it provides an outlook on recent research, thereby facilitating the adoption of new approaches. It also contains the description of external factors attributed to the environment for planning the provision of services. In addition, employees in the field can benefit from participating in different seminars and webinars to gain experience.
Benefits of Use
- Seeking advice on a complex case.
- Discussing mistakes and questionable cases.
- Contributing to the development of the field.
- Combined efforts for resolving critical issues.
The website is suitable for asking opinions on complex cases. The advanced doctors using this platform have much knowledge to share (Huo & Turner, 2019). The professional community discusses dubious cases: for example, mistakes made during surgeries. It helps specialists avoid them by learning from others’ experiences (Ukoha & Stranieri, 2021). Thus, the activity of employees on this platform boosts the development of the field.
Risks of Use
- The threat of disclosure of personal data of patients.
- Changing the attitude of management.
- Unplanned content moderation schemes.
- Disorienting information.
There is a threat of disclosure of personal data, and specialists can ruin their professional reputation. The attitudes of medical institutions may change after examining doctors’ profiles. According to Wen-Ying, Oh, and Klein (2018), the disadvantages of these platforms include ill-conceived content moderation and poor quality of content. They raise the question of trust and displace high-class professionals from the site in case of disagreement.
Opportunities for Researchers
- Possibility to find grants and contracts.
- Facilitating biomedical research in the world.
- Enhancing life and reducing illness.
- Reducing disability rates due to new medications.
Alongside the assistance in finding solutions to problems of medical facilities, the website allows receiving funding for examining global issues. The possibility to find grants and contracts using this platform facilitates conducting biomedical research in different countries. In the end, their results help enhance life and reduce illness in various populations, as well as address the situation with growing disability rates by introducing new medications.
Recommendations for Nursing Regarding Appropriate Use
- Maintaining high standards for specialists.
- The need for preserving patient confidentiality.
- Privacy settings allowing to protect personal information.
- Awareness of the lack of guarantees.
Physicians should acknowledge online patient privacy standards and refrain from publishing identifiable information. When using social networks, doctors should use privacy settings to protect personal data. Still, it should be understood that confidential settings do not provide any guarantee to different healthcare facilities. In order to maintain professional boundaries, participants should consider separating personal and professional information when publishing to exclude the possibility of misunderstandings.
Communicating Issues in the Workplace
- Maintaining proper professional boundaries.
- Paying attention to non-professional content.
- Discussing the matters with colleagues.
- Taking measures to avoid emerging conflicts.
Another task for medical specialists is to maintain proper professional boundaries on an organizational level. It means monitoring others’ posts to detect any significant problems with their content. When hospital employees see seemingly unprofessional information published by colleagues, they should be responsible for bringing this fact to their attention. It will help avoid conflicts with the patients and contribute to the creation of healthy relationships.
References
Huo, J., & Turner, K. (2019). Social media in health communication. In J. Bian, Y. Guo, Z. He, & X. Hu (Eds.), Social web and health research (pp. 53-82). Cham, Germany: Springer.
Ukoha, C., & Stranieri, A. (2021). On the value of social media in health care. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science, 6(17), 419-426. Web.
Wen-Ying, S. C., Oh, A., & Klein, W. M. (2018). Addressing health-related misinformation on social media. Journal of the American Medical Association, 320(23), 2417-2418. Web.