The ASHA Leader has included a number of “Get Social” articles in the past few months. I contributed one on How to Keep Your Business Side Separate for the April online edition.
Previous topics included How Reading Blogs Gets You Connected, On Being Socially Savvy, Build Your Career with FaceBook, How Pinteresting and Build Your Career With Social Media. All are worth a read.
But the one that really caught my eye was On the Pulse: For Your Eyes Only? This article appeared in the print edition of the December 2013 issue and covered confidentiality issues that can arise when using social media.
I am very careful not to show any students or names when I take photos for Instagram or my blog. I’ve periodically asked for assistance on Twitter about a client, but if I feel the need to add more personal info such as exact age or an unusual behavior or anything I feel might “give the patient away” I use a more direct form of contact (email or DM on Twitter).
Because I work for myself, I don’t run into the issues of implied endorsement by “liking” on Facebook and most of my students are too young for me to worry about clients friending/following me or being asked to reciprocate.
I’m curious how you are handling queries about assessments and/or treatment in light of privacy issues. One the of tremendous assets of social media has been the opportunity to interact with colleagues with more expertise than I especially if the issue isn’t something that crops up very often. I’m not ready to let that opportunity go!
Please let me know how you handle it in the comments below. Has anyone run into major problems with this?
