NHS staff rapped for gossiping about patients on Facebook

FB stupidity gone wild!

My Missus works in a school and the head has requested that no staff member even has a Facebook account for personal use, let alone talk about work on it!

Needless to say this has been ignored and the staff simply don't discuss anything about FB while at work and certainly don't talk about work on FB.

Three points

1. "Newcastle Upon Tyne foundation trust, ... carried out the most actions against staff ... [one] derived from staff making inappropriate comments about patient care and a manager on the site."

This sounds worryingly like an attempt to stop staff complaining about the workplace. Writing about patients is one thing, writing about management is another.

2. I used to work as a nurse, and we had a golden rule - never talk about patients when you are out. This applied when we went to the pub after work, or on works outing - anywhere. This was long before social media (even mobile phones). It was frowned upon by everyone if it happened - the culture was set up to make it unacceptable. Somewhere, this culture has been lost.

3. @Boethius - no, "most" nurses are not "really crap", but some are. There certainly has been a lot of criticism of the training regime that began as a pilot in the mid-80s, where nursing became a degree course, instead of an apprenticeship, which seems to have given at least some nurses the idea that they don't have to get their hands dirty. (Disclaimer - my nursing qualification is from the "old" system, and I was sceptical of the new system from the very start). Nursing has taken a long step away from patient care to ward management, and it may well be too late to reverse that. In any case, it is hard enough to find people from within the UK that want to work with sick people. Nurses with English as a second language are far from uncommon in many hospitals, and whilst they are generally very competent, the language difficulties can create barriers to good care ("Ah'm 'avin' trouble wi' mi water-works" doesn't convey much to someone fairly new from Poland, for instance).

It's a worry ....

During Consultant rounds this morning, Mr Ben O'Brian shit in the bed again. Nursing staff are furious. O'Brian is the Consultant. The patient felt too ill to comment.