Aishling should not accept this patients’ friend request By accepting this friend

Aishling should not accept this patients’ friend request. By accepting this friend request this initially innocent situation could lead to a damaged professional opinion of Aishling from other patients, the public and other professionals in the workplace with whom she works with.According to the HSE (2018), care compassion and communication are the three core values of nursing. If Aisling was to accept this friend request it would be a clear crossing of professional boundaries. Aishling’s work life and social life should be kept separate. Aisling has a responsibility to acknowledge her professional environment and the importance of this separation or personal relationships from professional relationships and vice versa. By blurring the lines between her professional and personal when she accepts this social media request from a patient, there is the potential for Aisling’s professional judgement to be impaired. This, consequently, would indicate that she is not committing to the core values and concepts of nursing as mentioned above.In addition, by accepting this friend request Aishling is not adhering to the 6 p’s as outlined by the NMBI (2013, pp.3) one of them being ‘privacy- Protect your professionalism, your reputation and yourself’. Aishling would be jeopardising her therapeutic relationship with this patient and this could have a knock-on effect with her future patients the public and other professionals. Patient confidentiality is a fundamental part of nursing and something that must be upheld throughout your entire practice. Under principle 4 of the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics (2018) ‘trust and confidentiality’, accepting a social media friend request from a patient is viewed as inappropriate use of social media which does not safeguard a patient’s confidentially. When social media is used unwisely and imprudently, there is the potential to delay, damage, or even destroy one’s professional and personal life, (Bernhardt. JM et al 2014).To conclude, nurses have a responsibility to establish and uphold appropriate boundaries in their therapeutic relationship. Assisting a client to understand when their personal actions, remarks, conversations and in Aishling’s situation the social media friend request, pass beyond the appropriate boundaries and exceed the acceptable nurse/patient relationship. It is the responsibility of the nurse in her professional capacity to explain to the client in clear plain but precise terms that this is nurse-client relationship, and not and cannot be a social or personal relationship, which is the same for Aisling.Bernhardt, JM, 2014. A social media primer for professionals: digital dos and don’ts. NCBI, [Online]. 15, 168-172. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24396119 [Accessed 6 February 2019].HSE. 2018. Values of Nursing and Midwifery. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/onmsd/nursing%20and%20midwifery%20values/valuesofnursingandmidwifery.html. [Accessed 4 February 2019].Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. 2018. Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nmbi.ie/Standards-Guidance/Code/Trust-Confidentiality. [Accessed 6 February 2019].Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. 2013. Guidance to Nurses and Midwives on Social Media and Social Networking. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nmbi.ie/Standards-Guidance/More-Standards-Guidance/Social-Media-Social-Networking. [Accessed 6 February 2019].