Episode 10: Leveraging Social Media in Healthcare

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse podcast, Giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh, today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Melanie Perry

It matter how much experience you have when you're new, your new and you get treated a certain way. Nine times out of ten. And so while we say on paper, don't be afraid to ask questions. We want you to ask questions. We want you to learn. What do we do? As soon as somebody asks a question that we think is stupid?

We either make fun of them to their face and we talk about them later.

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Melanie Perry, an experienced earners and someone who's making a big impact in health care. Melanie is known for her work outside the operating room, too. She founded the Circulating Life, providing practical advice for both new and seasoned O.R. nurses. Additionally, she runs the First Case podcast, a unique and informative platform for health care discussions. I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, a registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Com.

Oh, well, first and foremost, I, Melanie Perry, would like to introduce you to the nurse dot audience. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do?

Melanie Perry

Absolutely. I am Melanie Perry. I am an owners. I have been a nurse for, gosh, 21 years, maybe 22. At this point, I don't know. I'm old. I lose count. But I know that I've been in the O.R. for 12. I've done several different kinds of nursing. Prior to coming to the O.R., I was in pain management. I was in med Surge.

I was in mother, baby labor and delivery, neonatal ICU, military family. We moved around a lot, so I did different specialties and different jobs. But when I got into the O.R., I was like, Oh, oh, man, I love this. This is this is me. So I have stayed for the past 12 years and really specialized and perfected my understanding of the O.R. But one of the things that I ran into is orientation and training, and the operating room is hit or miss.

It is stressful and hard. And the the O.R. in and of itself is stressful and hard. And so trying to learn this specialty, this department can be challenging. And I was not fortunate enough to have perioperative one as one of my orientation foundational things that I did in the O.R. It was more like, okay, hey, you have a pulse and you're breathing.

Go over there and go do this and go do that. And it wasn't malicious on my leadership's part. It's just. It's just what they did, how they did it go work within the day, go work with them today. Go see this, Go see this. Okay. You're good to go. But I wasn't good. And I really struggle if I don't understand why are we doing what we're doing?

Why do we do this? Why are you telling me I have to prep a certain way? Why are you telling me that I have to hold the bottle a certain way to pour it on a back table? Or why? And people could. The answer was, well, that just because it's how we've always done it. And I'm like.

Cara Lunsford

That is the worst answer ever. Yeah, but that happens all the time in nursing, doesn't it? You're just like, I don't know.

Melanie Perry

I don't know. We just do. Oh, so all that being said, I would go home in my orientation during orientation and I would get online. Now, this was back in 2011 when I was orienting in the O.R. So different time with social media and different time with the Internet, but still very prevalent. Still turning to the Internet to look for a blog or people talking about their opinions or YouTube videos or something.

Cara Lunsford

How do I.

Melanie Perry

Prep a hand? Like, how do I do the things I need to do? And I really couldn't find what I was looking for. Yes, we're in is our professional organization and they have all sorts of stuff. But I wasn't a member so I couldn't access it and I was looking for those things that I could just find online.

And so I'm like, you know, eventually it was like, okay, I can't find it. I'm just going to do it myself and use the Internet, put that information out there, put my experience out there so that somebody else coming along, following along behind me can maybe have a few of their questions answered beyond, Well, this is just how we've always done it and this is what we do.

And so that's kind of what kicked me off into the website blog, social media world, and using social media to my advantage to talk about the O.R. and to help other people know what we do.

Cara Lunsford

So what was your first channel? What was the first channel you used? Was it YouTube? Was it Instagram? What was your first channel?

Melanie Perry

So actually, I started with a blog first and I was blogging, but when I was learning how to do blog, learning how to do a website, everybody was like, You have to have social media to go along with it. You have to have all these things. So I, being my age, you know, I went to Facebook because that's what I'm most familiar with, and I started a Facebook page.

And originally the Facebook page was just I would just put the graphics from the blog post. I would throw the graphics up there and just.

Cara Lunsford

Hey, Lisa, it wasn't MySpace, okay? That would have really aged.

Melanie Perry

You dated me.

Cara Lunsford

If you had said, Well, I started on MySpace and Tom was my first subscriber.

Melanie Perry

Yeah, that would be a problem. Yeah. I mean, I did have a MySpace page. Not going to I am that old, but no, I started on Facebook, started a Facebook page called The Circulating Life. It is literally all about being a circulating nurse, but it's inclusive to anybody that is in the perioperative space. Talk about anything and everything.

But at first it was just throw the graphics out there, maybe ask a question here or there. But, you know, but over time, it slowly built up, took on a life of its own to the point that managing that page and also its sister page on Instagram because I am over there too now, you know, because you have to catch both audiences, right?

You know, Instagram and Facebook. But that actually became the primary outlet with the blog kind of being in the background. And I will occasionally go to the blog. Now if I want to write something that's bigger than maybe anybody wants to read on Facebook, but putting the content out on Facebook, also putting it out on Instagram, learning how to use YouTube as well, because I do have stuff out there also.

But yeah, I started out on Facebook and it took on a very rambunctious life of its own, but it's been a lot of fun on the Facebook page.

Cara Lunsford

How many? Well, on Facebook, I guess it would be. Was it considered a page or a group? What did you have?

Melanie Perry

It's a page. I did not create a group. I created a page simply because it was just an easier way. Because I do work full time, I didn't want to have to moderate a group so much, whereas with a page I could limit it where it was just me putting out content and people could comment and we could just go with that.

I've gone back and forth of the idea now of creating a group, but still moderating it all and keeping up with it. I don't have time to herd cats and so it's kind of easier just as a page, right?

Cara Lunsford

Because if you are trying to kind of control the quality. Yeah. And how accurate your content is, I think you have a little bit better control on a page versus a group to what you were just saying about having to moderate, right? Because there's going to be other people who are going to contribute and then having to potentially have dialog or debate over whether or not what that person is bringing into the group is accurate.

Yeah, good practice, at least safe and good practice, right?

Melanie Perry

Yeah. I mean, that's just kind of the same where I fell with it because I do want my page to provide relevant, practical, helpful information to people. And yes, I do pull on the people who are part of this page who are followers to provide their insight, to answer questions. And any time I put out like I will get people emailing me constantly, Hey, I've run into this issue in the O.R. where you posted on the page and see what everybody says.

And totally, absolutely. Because it generates fantastic conversation and 90% of the time people are quick to provide really helpful information and really helpful, good practical experience. But you do have trolls. You do have people who show up or they're just, I don't know, bitter or angry or whatever. And so there is still going through the comments and cleaning out the stuff that is not applicable, but it's easier on a page than it is in a group where everybody has free rein to just post whatever they want.

And you also run into the risk. You know, I'm sure we'll talk about HIPA in a minute, but running into the risk of people throwing things up on the page that I don't want to be a part of because it might be a hip violation. I might hold up. We don't do that. So I try to keep that in mind to write.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. So I started out blogging, moved into your Facebook page, of course, made the natural migration over to Instagram. I have a little bit of YouTube. What's what's your YouTube channel? Is it the same.

Melanie Perry

Actually? So I have incorporated YouTube with the first Case podcast brand. And so the connecting those to how we got in there, it's an interesting story how that all started out. But yeah, so the first Case podcast is where I am on YouTube and I put my content out on YouTube through first cases.

Cara Lunsford

It's very cool. So those of you who have not had a chance to check out the podcast and first case, First case Media is the name of your company, correct?

Melanie Perry

Correct. First case media dot com. You can find us on our website there.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. And beyond Clean is the name of the actual podcast.

Melanie Perry

If you're in still processing beyond clean is the sterile processing brand. First case is the sister brand that deals with the operating room. And actually the the Facebook page is the reason that I'm even part of first case in the first place. I had been doing my own thing, had a pretty nice following on there, having a good time doing our stuff, and the guys who started beyond clean procedural processing wanted to branch out into the O.R. world because they had so many people like, okay, you've got all this great content, you're talking all about store processing, but what about the operating room?

I mean, oh, are and still processing have to go hand in hand. So what are you doing to talk about the O.R.? And they're like, Well, we're not. So they started looking for somebody who could really speak the O.R., be an expert in the O.R., but also understand social media. Understood. Kind of this new day and age of educating via social media.

And so I got this Facebook message from, hey, the owner of the company, one of the founders of the company. And at first, you know, you get messages on Facebook and you're like, hmm, who are you? What are you doing, man? So I like faith. I like, turned around and like, Internet stalked him to kind of find out who he was and be like, Are you a creeper or are you for real or whatnot?

And when I realized that Beyond was a very for real company and they really were doing some cool stuff, I messaged him back and that kind of I was like, Sure, why not? Let's start a podcast. And so first Case started recording in October of 2020, and then we released our first podcast in 2021. And here we are now, two years later, we're about to release season nine.

It's been fun.

Cara Lunsford

It's a fantastic podcast. I love Beyond Clean Love. First case, if you're in the O.R., I mean, I guess it's not really pack. You're not paid, perioperative. I give you a guess.

Melanie Perry

We will address perioperative topics that will apply to pre-op and PACU as well. But the primary focus does go into the O.R.. But since our patients move through all of surgical services, there are topics that touch on things that are relevant to anybody in the perioperative space.

Cara Lunsford

And I would say that if you are a pre-op or PACU nurse, that there's probably a good chance that you are going to maybe move in between these different areas that you're going to be possibly moving into or are moving into pre-op or, you know, moving around within that area at some point in your career? Yeah.

Melanie Perry

To in your career, you certainly can if you want to train in those areas, you will find PACU nurses all the time who used to be O.R. nurses. You'll find our nurses who used to work in pre-op. It just depends on where you want to move in with your career, because once again, nursing is fantastic in that regard.

You can do anything you want to do, and if you want to go learn something new, then there's an opportunity for you to do it. So yeah, definitely within surgical services you will find people who move all around to do it. All know it all just kind of depends on your location, your facility, and kind of what they make available for you as far as learning new stuff.

Cara Lunsford

And I also want to just mention that this is another great opportunity to see how a nurse yourself has taken all of that knowledge that you have acquired over 20 plus years of nursing and you were able to identify that there was an area that was in need of disruption, that you saw a need for access to information, reliable information, and that you went through the channels and you used what was available to you at the time, which was blogging at the time, and then moving into these social networks like Facebook and taking advantage of these opportunities to reach a larger audience, because even more so now than I think in the past.

Nurses are coming into this industry. Students are coming out of nursing school and into this industry, and many of them have not had the level of training that maybe we had 20 years ago. And they are desperate for that information. So making sure that they have an area to go to where they can get really good quality education in a way that best fits their needs.

Some people are auditory learners, some people are visual learners. Some people do better when they read. And it sounds to me like you've kind of covered all the different areas of learning.

Melanie Perry

Well, it's true. I personally, I have my, you know, my own learning styles. I have my own learning challenges just like every other person does. And I also have my personal soapboxes when it comes to nursing and when it comes to specifically, how are we treating our new nurses And that is applicable across the board. It doesn't matter what specialty you're in.

I've been new in several different specialties and it doesn't matter how much experience you have when your new, your new and you get treated a certain way nine times out of ten. And so while we say on paper, don't be afraid to ask questions, we want you to ask questions, we want you to learn, what do we do as soon as somebody asks a question that we think is stupid, we either make fun of them with their face when we talk about them later, like we do one of the two things.

And so one of the drivers with what I write and what I talk about is remember that you were new once.

Cara Lunsford

To.

Melanie Perry

How did it feel when you were new and you needed to know something? How did it feel when you needed to find out information and you were afraid to ask? Because, you know, Becky down the hall was going to bite your head off if you you know, if you acted like you didn't know what was going on. So take that feeling and remember how you felt and don't pass that on to the next generation of nurses because we need nurses.

We need them in our departments specifically. I can really primarily speak to the O.R., but we're desperate for staffing. Our staffing crisis is terrible, and we're not going to improve it if we don't improve how we treat people. And so obviously, I just thought it was a soapbox. I could talk all day, but remembering how it feels to be new and I would.

And writing about that writing, remember, remember, remember. And then hopefully changing the way we see our new people so that they have a better experience and they aren't afraid to ask a question. They are open to learning and then providing that in the background, maybe on Facebook, maybe on Instagram, maybe it's YouTube, come learn, come figure it out.

Just whatever you need to do. Here's the five things you need to know. If you're going to be new in the O.R.. What do you need to know or what are the questions to ask if you're going to work in orthopedics, whatever. But putting that out there to help them is it makes me feel good if it helps somebody.

Cara Lunsford

I love that. I think we have this in common because I took a little bit of a different direction. I wanted to create a professional networking site for nurses and nursing students because I wanted to create a safe space where nurses or nursing students could come and ask questions and get that support and get that mentorship. So for me, it was about creating the platform, right, as opposed to utilizing the other platforms that were out there.

But I was not great on social media. For me, it was about I want to create a space. I want to have a home. And the rules of that home are that this is a safe space, right? We don't tolerate bullying here. Maybe that just makes me a more controlling person because I was like, you know, this is my house.

Melanie Perry

But that's good, though. There are benefits to that because one of the downsides to social media is you get people behind a computer screen in the safety of their own bedroom with their, you know, Diet Coke and their dog, and they're just tapping away on their keyboard and they can be vicious. And like we talked about earlier, giving people free rein in a group or, you know, with different social media pages, you can get some some terrible stuff.

And so it has created, you know, more work to try to keep up with those comments and make sure. But because other people can't post, it does kind of control it more that way. So I am as controlling, I think, as you are and just on our different platforms. But you want to control that because the goal and the entire purpose is to give people a place where they can get information, they can access what they need to know, they can find experts, they can find mentorship, they can find help.

And we're not going to make them feel like idiots in the process. And so that's I mean, I think we have a common ground in that regard, no matter which platform we went, because that's what we want to do and I think that's what we should all be doing. As dare I say, older nurses bringing in the new generation who we need to pass that on.

We've got to lay a foundation for new people to be able to pick up the mantle and keep going. And if we if we chew them up and spit them out, that's not going to happen.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. So speaking of being new. Yeah. Okay. And that new experience and how you might utilize social, I'll give an example. When I came out of the acute care space, I was kind of straddling two worlds. I was still working at the Bedside Children's Hospital, and then I decided that I was going to additionally work in Home Health, which I knew nothing about and didn't get great training basically.

Yeah, I don't know if y'all are picking up on the theme here, but it's a little bit like drop you in the hot water.

Melanie Perry

I hope you can swim because otherwise you'll drown. But let's go.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, just kind of throw you into the deep end and hopefully you can doggy paddle your way. And I would come home repeatedly and say to my wife, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel inadequate. I'm here sitting in front of these patients. I'm supposed to teach them how to work this pump by themselves. I don't even know how to work the pump and every situation.

I'm just walking into it and I don't know what I'm walking into. I don't know what kind of equipment I'm going to have to learn and then teach. So not just not just know it myself, but I have to turn around and teach it to this 75 year old woman and her husband who has hearing aids. And I'm trying to literally, Lee, write it out step by step.

Okay, first turn on the pump.

Melanie Perry

Because you're probably in your car watching a YouTube video before you went in to make sure you knew how to use it.

Cara Lunsford

So not even before I went in because I didn't know what was being delivered in the first place. So I go in, I open a box. I don't know what's in the box until I open it. I start digging through and then I find, Oh, it's a gem star or it's a curling 6000, or it's say, Oh gosh, there was like so many different types.

In fact, there was one that didn't have an on off button. Literally, the way you turned on the pump was by taking the battery out, flipping it around and putting it back in, because the pharmacist, when they sent it, would send it in backwards so that it wouldn't run out of battery. And then you had to know to open up the battery, turn it around, put it back in and close it, and then the pump would just go on.

Melanie Perry

No.

Cara Lunsford

Yes. And I was like, Who? Who created.

Melanie Perry

This? That was a good idea.

Cara Lunsford

And you're trying to instill confidence.

Melanie Perry

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

In these patients. You're telling them, Look, I swear, I've been a nurse for ten years. I'm not an idiot. I certainly can help you with this. And here I'm like, looking for the on off switch. So I started learning like, Oh, you know what? Let me just go out to my car. I have to go and grab a few supplies out of my car.

I'll be right back. And as I'm walking to my car, I'm looking up on YouTube. What is this pump? Where's the on off switch?

Melanie Perry

Yeah. And you know, nothing.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. Here I've got Harry the nurse showing me. You just got to take the battery out and flip it around. And what's the code to turn it on? And. And all of those things and it was crazy. But I was always so grateful for these content creators that had taken the time to go onto YouTube and just share with other people these common frequently asked questions.

Melanie Perry

Oh, yeah.

Cara Lunsford

But I oftentimes felt that it was really important. And I also felt like I had a lot of knowledge to share. But because I wasn't super savvy with the social world and with all of these platforms, I oftentimes just felt like, how do I share all of this knowledge that I have up in my head with other people?

Because I really do love teaching teachings like one of my favorite things to do. So I really love that there were nurses out there that have started using YouTube. Now I feel like we've moved towards Instagram reels. Tick tock. Tick tock is definitely the short form video place to go. Have you moved into Tik tok and what do you think about tick tock.

Melanie Perry

Tick tock? It's fine. I will say that I have dabbled in it, to be honest. It is the Tik Tok videos you get 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever it is, short form real quick. And there's some really good nursing influence out there, influencers out there that can utilize it and get their point across in 60 seconds.

I am not one of those people I've tried. I am too wordy. I don't know, but it's really hard to try to condense and a topic on patient care or a topic on patient positioning or a topic on patient safety or anything in the operating room to really get it into that quick soundbite of information that's going to really put out correct actionable information that can be put to use.

It's not that I'm opposed to doing it. I've tried. It's just trying to get it condensed to such a short amount. I've gotten better and I am more utilizing Facebook reels and Instagram reels and whatnot, and I am not opposed to Tik tok. It's just more like having one more page, one more social media account to manage is almost too much because it's like I have to pick what am I going to do?

Where am I going to be? And I've already mastered the Facebook and Instagram world, so it's almost preferable to just take advantage of the reels that they have and the options they have and just, you know, until I have an assistant who can throw all that stuff on Tik Tok for me as well. But, but you see, you see 45 seconds.

What you don't see as the 4 hours that goes into editing those videos and the amount of time it takes. I have several reels up on Facebook that took me 2 to 3 hours to do to actually get it edited down, to get it produced, to get it. And there's only so much time you have in the day.

And if you don't have a production team behind you helping you get that stuff done, it's almost impossible. And a lot of these nursing influencers actually have it's more than just them. They have a team and so if you have that, it's a lot more doable. I'm not like, I'm not knocking it in any way, shape or form.

If you can get good content out there and you can do it, more power to you. Please do it. Just a lot that goes into it behind the scenes that I don't think people really appreciate or take into account.

Cara Lunsford

I couldn't agree more. I think that that is one of the biggest challenges is that each of these sites I almost feel like they should create. I'm going to make an analogy and it's maybe it's maybe going to make no sense.

Melanie Perry

Go for it. Go for. I'll give it a try.

Cara Lunsford

You know, like those universal outlets.

Melanie Perry

Yes.

Cara Lunsford

Okay. So in my mind, go with me. Go with me on this.

Melanie Perry

I'm all the way. I'm all the way. And already I think I know where you're going. Go for it.

Cara Lunsford

In my mind, I feel like there needs to be this universal outlet where you create a video for all your listeners out there, what have you, what have you is going to take this idea and you're going to go make $1,000,000,000 with it and more power to you. Okay? If you do it, I give it to you. Now that there needs to be a way for content creators to create one piece of content and then be able to say, Hey, I hey, generative AI, I want you to make this one piece of content that I have made for YouTube, which is actually 45 minutes long.

Melanie Perry

Yeah, I can do it.

Cara Lunsford

Hey, Jenny, I want you to make it into a reel, make it into a tik tok, turn it into a blog.

Melanie Perry

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

Give me a podcast transcript. I don't know.

Melanie Perry

Yeah. Take my one thing and make it applicable across the platforms because I'm taking the same content and then recreating it over and over again for each different thing. I don't have time to do that and then to put out content once or twice a day like some of the big, big influencers do. There's no way. So yes, somebody needs to take that idea and run with it and make $1,000,000,000.

And just remember you care in, you know, when they're rich one day and be like, Yup, she was the reason I had this idea.

Cara Lunsford

I hope so. If you're tired of nursing and you want to go make $1,000,000,000, this might be your opportunity. Because I think about that all the time. I for example, you and I are sitting here. We're going to we're spending 45 minutes an hour talking tons of great content. If I wanted to take this and distill it down into five different types of content, pieces of content, wouldn't that be great?

Melanie Perry

It'd be fantastic. We've talked about enough different things. You could break it up into small little bites of different content.

Cara Lunsford

Yep, it could be opposed, it could be a LinkedIn post and knowing exactly what the audiences are for those different platforms.

Melanie Perry

That's another big one.

Cara Lunsford

It's a big one. If I'm doing a post for LinkedIn, it's going to be different than if I'm doing a post for Instagram. I also know the demographic, the audience on Instagram is very different than the audience on Facebook and on Tik Tok. So being able to curate and talk to those audiences is so important in the format that they want to consume that information.

Melanie Perry

Yeah, well, that actually ties into learning style and it ties into how people are consuming information. And so but you connect to that to your different generations. You know, your your boomers, your Gen-X, your Gen Z, millennials, all of these different people that are still in the workforce, you know, we've got I think whoever the generation has beyond the baby boomers, they have a specific name.

I just talked about it. Look, my phone is listening to me because it just pulled it up for me. That is terrifying. But let's see the silent generation. There's the greatest generation, the silent generation, the boomers, ex millennials, and then the.

Cara Lunsford

Silent.

Melanie Perry

Generation. Generation is still some of those people are still in the workforce. So when you are putting out content, when you are putting out information, paying attention to your generations because they're going to consume content differently, they're going to consume information differently, they might want it written, whereas your gender, these are going to want to quit real or they're going to want it on Instagram.

You're going to find more Gen X on Facebook, you're going to find boomers on Facebook. It's just where do you find them and how do they want to consume information? So you have to know your audience. It's just like learning style. You have to know how they want to consume it, how do they find value and how do you give them that value?

Because it's all about them and how do you help them? It's an interesting, very interesting study.

Cara Lunsford

I would also add to that knowing your audience, knowing their learning style, their preferences and all of that, and also really staying attuned to trends and where things are headed. That's always been something that's been really fascinating for me, is anticipating where things are going. For example, now with I'm going to bring up a whole nother I'm going to I'm going to peel this onion back.

Melanie Perry

I love it.

Cara Lunsford

Just a little bit further. Okay. So as we start, move in towards generative AI, there's a lot of really exciting things that are coming with Jenny AI Anybody who's used Chad, GPT, I use it on the regular. My boss, our CEO at work is really interested in us using this to help make our jobs more efficient, spend our time doing the things we love, removing those medial menial tasks and stuff like that.

So this is happening. If you think you're going to avoid it, you're not avoiding it. So you either have to figure out how to embrace it and learn about it. If you try to avoid it, I don't think it's going to work. Now, that being said, there is already deepfakes, already deep fakes out there. Deepfakes for those of you don't know what a deepfake is.

Basically someone created either an image of someone doing something, saying something that they didn't actually do or say, but it looks just like them and sounds just like them. I've seen some of these deepfakes myself.

Melanie Perry

Believable.

Cara Lunsford

Super believable, or shocking. I think that where we're going to be headed is that people are going to be craving more either in-person stuff or things that they feel can't be duplicated in some way. Live radio stuff that is more live or less prerecorded or edited or anything like that, where they want to feel like you're listening on a radio and you're actually listening to somebody talk in real time.

Melanie Perry

Yeah, I think what you're hitting on is authenticity. And people want it to be authentic. They want to know that what they're hearing is from the person. They think they're hearing it from that. And then what they are receiving is stuff that's going to bring value for them. And the whole foundation of that is authenticity being the absolute real person that both of us are providing, the content that we provide, and they know it's actually coming from us, not a bot somewhere, you know, or somebody who created something else that's, you know, and they're pretending to be a person that they're not that's not really them.

But yeah, authenticity. People crave authenticity.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. And I think we started to see that trajectory even before Gen I really popped into the scene. You started to see people take the filters off of their Instagrams. Suddenly it was not popular anymore to be filtered. It was more popular to be unfiltered. So when we are tracking and paying attention to trends, I always say that if I went back to school 100%, I would be a sociology major.

Melanie Perry

I would be fascinating. It would absolutely be fascinating. Right now.

Cara Lunsford

I'm fascinated by people in general, probably why I'm the VP of community, because I am just literally fascinated by people.

Melanie Perry

Know people are fascinating.

Cara Lunsford

People are fascinating. I just think that if you are a content creator and you're thinking about wanting to bring your content and making it available to the masses that it's so important to pay attention to these trends, use platforms that maybe allow you to reach a variety of people. So whether you have something that's listenable podcast video and something that's written probably like the three, the three main ways, would you agree with that?

Melanie Perry

I definitely agree because you have people who love podcasts or love being able to listen while they're in the car on the way to work. They have a long commute, but you have other people who really don't want to be talked to. They don't want to be just listen to somebody talking on the way to work. That's not going to get them.

But they will scroll through rails or they'll scroll through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever, and they'll watch something that way and they'd be like, Oh, hey, let me go find out more about that. Let me go see, you know, which then leads you to your written or your written long form information or YouTube where they can, when they want do on their timeframe, watch a five minute or a ten minute video that gives them more information about what they saw in the quick snippet on the reel that they watched.

But everybody's different. Everybody wants to consume information differently. And if you just assume that everybody's going to take it all in one way, you're not going to be able to reach your audience if you don't have multiple outlets for people to consume it.

Cara Lunsford

Yep. So let's talk about the dangers. HIPA Oh, yeah. Let's just touch on really quick because we got to talk about HIPA. So when you are bringing information to people and you're bringing it in a variety of forms, you have to be conscious and aware of HIPA. Don't get yourself in trouble.

Melanie Perry

Yeah. So HIPA, if you need the definition, if you have not heard this before, HIPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. I have to read that to make sure I say it right, because I always get my words mixed up. But that's what it is. Came out in 96 and it's it's a federal law.

It requires the creation of standards to protect our patients from inadvertent use of their information. We it has to be controlled. Right. But how does that translate into social media when we get online and everybody knows where we work because we've got it listed as our place of employment and they can see where we work. We're taking pictures at work, we've got our badges on, they can see who we are, and then suddenly we took a selfie or an AC or whatever you want to call it, take a group picture and our patients are in the background.

And we didn't think about what was in the background when we took a picture or we take a picture and the board in the O.R., the boards are really big and they could be in the background and maybe, you know, somebody's surgery is very easy to see if they're their name. All these things that we in the day and age and we have computers and cameras in our pockets, we don't think necessarily about how we can violate HIPA when we're just trying to take a selfie or a picture with a friend of ours.

The people in the background, even patients, family members being in the background can be a problem. What if you get on social media, say you have a really bad day, a patient passes away or you have a code or something, something awful. And our natural tendency is to go look for support, to look for people to help us talk through it, work through that trauma, work through how hard that was.

But you can't put all that information out on social media as much as you might want to, because you want the support, you want the comfort, you want the sympathy. But I can't say that I had an older lady at UAB or I had an older lady at the hospital. She was having a right told me replaced. But in the middle of a surgery she threw a clot and she died on the table.

Like I just gave you all sorts of information about this patient. Even though I didn't say her name, I just told you so much stuff. And now.

Cara Lunsford

And if your information is on LinkedIn about where you work, everybody suddenly.

Melanie Perry

Is.

Cara Lunsford

Suddenly someone is going to go, Oh, Melanie, who works at so-and-so, who just posted who said on this day, who actually identified the day that it happened, because they'll say today. Right. Or they'll say yesterday. So now they've identified when it happened where it happened and the procedure that was being done. And that's enough to connect the dots.

Melanie Perry

Yeah. And if a family member or the patient, if they can connect the dots in a way that they can reasonably assume that you were talking about them, then they have a legitimate case to say that you have violated their privacy unless you can prove otherwise. So like you have to think beyond patient immediate. Okay. Yeah. I don't think anybody would get on social media and put their name and date of birth of the patient.

But we will get out there in the comments talking about, oh, I had this patient come in and they were X, Y, and Z, and they had this, this and this. And and you have given so much information that people can't figure it out. And it's very common in nursing because of the stress of our jobs. It is very common for us to turn to social media, to vent, to relieve stress, to laugh about the things that we encounter.

I mean, there's only so many times people can come in with things in orifices where they should not be. You know, that people were going to try to laugh about it or talk about it. And that makes sense. I get that. But watch out for the details because all of the details are what's going to get you in trouble when it comes to violating HIPA.

You always want to protect your patients, even if you want to laugh about the experience, talk about what you what you went through. You always have to protect your patient's privacy.

Cara Lunsford

Right. And a lot of times when we're explaining something or when we're giving education or providing education, we want to use case studies. We want to use our own personal experiences to help tell a story.

Melanie Perry

Right.

Cara Lunsford

And we have to remember that we can't necessarily do that unless this is a case study. And if you need to give an example, it's fine to cite a case study that is public record, right? If you need to go in search for a case study to support something that you're teaching or educating about, that's fine. You can go and get it if it's a public record.

Yeah.

Melanie Perry

Case study out there. Use what's public.

Cara Lunsford

But if you use your own personal experiences, you have to be very, very, very careful about the amount of information you're sharing. Can you give an example, maybe, Melanie, of something you could say when you're giving an example of maybe a personal experience that would not not violate HIPA in your opinion, if you were to give an example?

Melanie Perry

Yeah. I mean, going back to what I said earlier, obviously I listed all these issues with the patient, but, you know, you can still talk about having a hard day. You can still say that you were part of a code in a patient's room and the patient passed away and you're really struggling with that or whatever. You've given no information other than you know that you you experiences, but you've not said, you know, any gender of the patient, you've not set any conditions you've not said any diagnoses or if you even wanted to talk about a good thing that you experienced as well, and that maybe a patient's family member was incredibly kind to you,

Maybe they you know, you had a powerful moment with the patient's family before you took their child back to surgery or whatever. You don't have to give all of that information. You know, you see the post where people are just reminded how good people really are deep down and just the goodness of humanity and just, you know, it was a great day at work.

I had a patient's family member that just really connected with and they had a great, you know, or we had a great experience or something, keeping it very vague. You can discuss that. Just don't go into details and then it's fine, if that makes sense at all. Just remembering to be vague and never give specifics, even if you don't even say today, you could always leave that today, the tomorrow, the yesterday out of it.

And just one time at work. You know, that's what a lot of times when I do tell stories, I go with the. So one time when I was at work this happened because then it doesn't tie it to a particular day. It doesn't tie it to a particular event. It's just I experienced this at some point in my career and then you can't really pin it down.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, that's a very good point. Being a little bit more vague about when something happened can really help put some distance between you and someone making inference of who you might be talking about.

Melanie Perry

Exactly. And I also always recommend I know people are proud of where they work and they are super happy to, you know, talk about their place of employment. You don't need it in your bio on Facebook, you don't need it in your Instagram information. Take it off. Give yourself that degree of separation so that it's a little bit harder for people to connect the dots.

Sure. On LinkedIn, you have that information on there, but you don't have to. You can take that off as well. It is really your personal preference, how much information you share about yourself on any of these social media sites. But if you don't on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, any of these have your bio in them, you don't need your place of employment.

I would recommend leaving it off. And then that way it's just a little bit safer.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. Well, I feel like this has been such an educational podcast. If anyone's looking to become a content creator, I think that this was the podcast to listen to because you have just an incredible amount of knowledge around creating really valuable content that is consumed in so many different types of ways. And I'm just so grateful that you spent time with me.

But I will also be a guest on your podcast. We're doing a little a little switcheroo, and then you're going to get to ask me the questions.

Melanie Perry

And I'm really excited, though, because we're going to dive into that entrepreneurial spirit. And what does it look like? I'm a nurse. I want to change the world. I want I see a need. I want to fix a need. I want to something. How did you do it? How does somebody else do it? And all of those questions.

We're going to have a great conversation.

Cara Lunsford

Melanie, I'm going to tell you all the things.

Melanie Perry

I'm glad.

Cara Lunsford

I'm going to share all the things with you.

Melanie Perry

Okay, good. I'm excited.

Cara Lunsford

All right. Well, thank you so much for spending an hour with me. I can't wait to get this one live and stay tuned for when she interviews me.

Melanie Perry

Please do. Absolutely.

Cara Lunsford

All right. Thanks so much, Melanie La.

Melanie Perry

Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Cara Lunsford

If you're a nurse or a nursing student who enjoyed this episode, don't forget to join us on the nurse dot com app where you can find the nurse dot discussion group, a place where we dissect each episode in detail and delve deeper into today's topics. Nurse Dot is a nurse dot com original podcast series, production music and sound editing by Dawn Lunsford, Production Coordination by Ryan Wade, Additional editing by John Wells.

Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in to the Nurse Dot podcast. Until next time, keep spreading the love and the care.