Testify, sister!

Astute readers may have noticed that my last post mentioned three areas about which I am incensed enough to rant about. So here is my Number Two (and all of those who are giggling at the incidental scatalogical reference can stop now).

Throughout 2012-3 AHPRA has been conducting consultation in regards to new Guidelines for Social Media.One would think that this would be an area where extensive debate and discussion would ensue, with input from many experts. The blogosphere took off with criticism and comments, and one would hope that AHPRA paid attention to the online commentary as well as the formal submissions to their consultation process.

• 4/9/2012 Impacted Nurse - New AHPRA social media policy: we may be in big trouble here.
• 6/9/2012 Croakey Blog - Is AHPRA on the right track re social media use by health professionals? A chance to let them know your views…
• 7/9/2012 Croakey Blog - More feedback to AHPRA on planned social media policy for health professionals (get with the times…)

On Feb 17th this year AHPRA announced the implementation of new Guidelines to be rolled in from March 17th. The Social Media Policy is generally worded fairly well, and seems, at least to my eye, to be quite reasonable. It primarily warns practitioners to be careful when using social media and to uphold professional principles of confidentiality, impartiality, and ethical behaviour.

Along with the swag of updated guidelines is a new Advertising Guideline which essentially reinforces the current stance that testimonials of health services (ie a patient saying how great their doctor was, or how well their surgery went) is not appropriate and should not be used by health professionals in advertising or marketing. Nothing controversial there.

But these new guidelines go one step further. AHPRA has revamped its Social Media stance and incorporated this into the new Advertising Guidelines. Now not only is it unacceptable to use testimonials on your own website, but you cannot allow others to leave testimonials on your website, or other sites that you control. Furthermore, if you become aware of a testimonial (positive or negative) on a website you do not control then you must take reasonable steps to have that testimonial removed, or else you are liable to be fined under the National Act.

WTF? I am liable for a $5000 fine if someone else writes something about me on a third-party blog or rating site???

Social Media Champion Jill Tomlinson (whose is regularly attributed as being responsible for #Destroythejoint, a concept that I never fully understood, but then again I am not a twitterer, or tweeter, or twit, or twat, or whatever someone who uses Twitter should be called) has launched a solo campaign against these new guidelines with an Open Letter, published at Croakey.

If you think these guidelines are right on, then please let me know. If you think they are way off the mark, then don’t just let me know… let AHPRA know! Or the AMA, or your college, or the newspaper. Heck, you can even spread the word on this new fangled thing called Social Media.

New Advertising Guidelines - Social Media - Excerpts

6.2.3 Testimonials

Section 133 of the National Law states:

(1) A person must not advertise a regulated health service, or a business that provides a regulated health service, in a way that – 

(c) Uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business

The National Law does not define ‘testimonial’, so the word has its ordinary meaning of a positive statement about a person or thing. In the context of the National Law, a testimonial includes recommendations, or statements about the quality of a regulated health service including clinical care, personal experiences of a regulated health service or about the benefits of a particular practitioner or regulated health service by someone who received the service. Testimonials can distort a person’s judgment in his or her choice of health practitioner. They may misrepresent the skills and or expertise of practitioners and create unrealistic expectations of the benefits such practitioners may offer health consumers. Testimonials in advertising include: 

1. using or quoting testimonials on a website, such as patients posting comments about a practitioner on the practitioner’s business website, particularly when the website encourages patients to post comments and/or selectively publishes patient comments, and/or
2. the use of patient stories to promote a practitioner or regulated health service.

There are a number of independent websites that invite public feedback/reviews about a patient’s experience of a regulated health practitioner, business and/or service. These websites are designed to help consumers make more informed decisions and increase transparency of interactions.

A review is not considered to be a testimonial or purported testimonial, in breach of section 133 (1)(c) of the National Law when it only comments on non-clinical issues, regardless of whether it is positive, negative or neutral.

Reviews must not contain statements about the quality of clinical care received from the regulated health practitioner, business and/or service.

A practitioner must take reasonable steps to have any testimonials associated with their health service or business removed when they become aware of them, even if they appear on a website that is not directly associated and/or under the direct control or administration of that health practitioner and/or their business or service.  This includes unsolicited testimonials. 

‘Reasonable steps’ include taking action in the practitioner’s power, such as directly removing, or requesting removal, of the testimonials. For example, a review on a social media site that states ‘Appointment ran very late and magazines were old’, is not considered a testimonial as it makes no reference to the clinical care provided by a regulated health practitioner, business or service. However, a review on the same social media site that states ‘Practitioner was quick to diagnose my illness and gave excellent treatment’, is a testimonial which references clinical care and is considered in breach of the National Law.

Once the practitioner becomes aware of the testimonial, they must take reasonable steps to have the testimonial removed (also refer to Section 7.1 on social media).

7.1 Social media

The National Law prohibits advertising in any way that uses testimonials or purported testimonials. Testimonials, or comments that may amount to testimonials, made on social media sites by patients or other people may contravene the National Law (refer to Section 6.2.3 of these guidelines for more information on testimonials).

Social media includes work related and personal pages on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

A person is responsible for content on their social networking pages even if they were not responsible for the initial publication of the information or testimonial. This is because a person responsible for a social networking account accepts responsibility for any comment published on it, once alerted to the comment. Practitioners with social networking accounts should carefully review content regularly to make sure that all material complies with their obligations under the National Law.

These guidelines should be read in conjunction with the Social media policy, published on National Boards’ websites.

Social media

‘Social media’ describes the online and mobile tools that people use to share opinions, information, experiences, images, and video or audio clips and includes websites and applications used for social networking. Common sources of social media include, but are not limited to, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, blogs (personal, professional and those published anonymously), WOMO, True Local and microblogs such as Twitter, content sharing websites such as YouTube and Instagram, and discussion forums and message boards.

That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger

“The report of my death was an exaggeration” - Mark Twain, New York Journal, 2 June 1897. 

Firstly an apology to my long time readers – there has been some upheaval in the ranks of the Paper household and so other issues have taken priority over blogging and social commentary. Therefore this blog may have appeared to be dead or semi-comatose, but instead it has just been in hibernation. It comes back to life for worthy issues, and there have been at least three very worthy issues that deserve some attention. The first is something that should hit close to home for every doctor and health professional, being that of personal security.

Like many other surgeons around the country I was shocked at the senseless, violent attack on a fellow surgeon in Melbourne last week. I do not purport to know the details of what happened, but from newspaper reports and the surgical rumour mill, it appears to have been a targeted attack by a somewhat unhinged patient or relative. It was vicious and unrelenting and the victim has been lucky to survive, probably saved by the fact that it happened at the start of a weekday in a fully staffed major hospital.

I have chosen not to link to news reports of this attack as I suspect this colleague would prefer that his online profile and the rest of his life is not defined by this event any more than necessary.

Security in hospitals has been a hot topic. It has been championed by the AMA particularly in the Emergency Department setting.  Ambulance officers, ED and Psychiatry nurses often bear the brunt of violent behaviour from patients, along with staff in aged care facilities caring for confused and demented patients, as well as the perfectly intact but lecherous ones. GPs take personal security so seriously (especially after the tragic death of GP Dr Khulod Maarouf-Hassan in Melbourne some years ago - link included since I see little harm in doing so) that they now design consulting rooms around quick escapes and duress alarms. The last case I recall of an Australian surgeon being violently attacked was that of Victor Chang who was killed by some thugs with a rather daft plan to make money. There may well have been others that I am not aware of.

Some suggest that the problem of frequent violent assaults on health care staff is due to soaring nationwide crime and the standard knee-jerk response to these assaults is to beef up security, such as arming security guards with guns, putting up plexiglass screens, handing out duress alarms to all staff, and even setting up metal detectors at hospital entrances akin to some US schools after the Columbine Massacre. Obviously this risks escalation of violence and creation of a divide between staff and patient.

Others say that it represents inadequate mental health funding, or the natural outcome of community-based mental health care.

If you ask me, this represents a slow and gradual shift in the degree of respect that the community holds for health care workers in general. The nurse, the paramedic and the doctor are no longer perceived as someone who has dedicated their lives to the wellbeing of patients and the community in general. They become a valid target of outrage and violence.

Modern medical TV dramas (see ER, Chicago Hope, Grey's Anatomy) portray us as “real people” who have “real problems”. We are invincible and then we are fallible. We make a few mistakes and then we clock off and go home without a care for the bloke in Bed 22 with the fractured NOF and urinary retention that the overnight cover will sort out (unless it suits the dramatic love-interest plot twist for us to hang around in the on-call lounge).

Industrial bargaining portrays us as replaceable commodities, or heartless negotiators risking our patient’s lives for a 4% pay rise. (See Link 1, Link 2) Admittedly, certain health unions will play the same card back at the Government of the day seeking a similar productivity gain (how on earth do you measure productivity on a ward?).

Health care is no longer seen to be full of altruistic souls in a profession that holds a high moral ground. It is no longer a desirable profession to work in. It pays poorly compared to many careers in commerce or IT. It involves menial and what some might consider degrading tasks on a daily basis that cannot be delegated to some unpaid intern (much as we might try). On an hourly basis my plumber makes more than me and we both have to wade around in wee and poo. Who would want to be a doctor, and why do they deserve our respect?

The reason, I think, should be simple. When you are at your lowest, when your body is flaccid and your soul is shaken, when every skerrick of hope seems to be gone, we are the people to will tend to you, look out for you, and make decisions in your best interest until you recover and can make them for yourself. We have to act for your benefit above any personal benefit to us. And if you don’t respect us, it makes it mighty hard for us to respect you.