Niraj Mistry*, The Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Shelley Romoff, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada Janice Campbell, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada Arlette Lefebvre*, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Web 2.0 approaches for clinical practice, clinical research, quality monitoring Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: MaRS Centre, 101 College Street, Toronto, Canada Room: Auditorium Date: 2009-09-18 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Last modified: 2009-08-13

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Background: Many healthcare institutions have banned employee use of social media sites, like Facebook and YouTube, on hospital computers. The most commonly sited reason for denying access to these sites is in order to mitigate the possibility that employees are wasting time on these sites while at work, thus decreasing productivity. While restricting access to these sites may optimize efficiency, it does not prevent employees from using these technologies for personal and work-related activities at home, including some activities which may be inappropriate.
Objective: To qualitatively describe patterns of social media use and issues encountered by employees of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.
Methods: Twenty-four hospital employees, representing a cross section of departments (eg. IT, Quality and Risk Management, Bioethics, Communications and Public Affairs, etc.), and roles (eg. physicians, nurses, social work, allied health professionals, researchers, etc.) participated in three focus groups. Both open-ended written questionnaires and group discussions were used to explore patterns of social media use, rewards and risks. This study was approved under the Quality Improvement rubric. All focus groups were conducted by one individual from an external social media consulting agency and all data were recorded anonymously. A content analysis was used to determine themes within the focus groups.
Results: Social media are being used by many staff for shift management/scheduling, research on best practices and new developments in their fields and to anonymously monitor patient’s lifestyle choices, progress and behavior. However, there were also many concerns raised by staff regarding social media technologies in the workplace. Employees felt that the hospital had not put enough effort into providing safe online communities of patients and their families, ultimately driving families to use harmful online support groups. Furthermore, patients and families have limited connectivity to the internet at the hospital as well, making it difficult to maintain connections with their friends and family, ultimately affecting their well being. With increasing use of social media by both, patients and families and employees, numerous staff find it difficult to maintain appropriate professional boundaries. Similarly, hospital employees recognize problems in maintaining professional decorum between staff resulting from inappropriate media shared on social networking profiles. Other concerns raised related to social media use during work hours, corporate email overload and a lack of virtual collaboration between staff.
Conclusions: Rather than reflexively prohibiting social media use at the hospital, arising from the fear that these technologies will compromise healthcare quality, The Hospital for Sick Children is taking a proactive approach in developing a comprehensive social media policy that reflects the opportunities in innovation, excellence and collaboration that social media present. In tandem with policy development, a social media education curriculum for staff and a social media guide for patients and families are necessary to facilitate the safe and ethical use of these communication technologies in healthcare.