Professionalism as a Community Disability Practitioner

Social media is a double-edged sword, therefore, a proactive approach in maintaining professionalism, especially online, must be adopted.

What is Professionalism?

Professionalism, in the context of this article, refers to being bound by the ethical norms of a profession (Collier, 2012). Five clusters of medical professionalism include adherence to ethical principles, effective interactions with patients (clients or service users), effective interactions with workers within the health system (other stakeholders), reliability, and commitment to improving competence. Elements of the five clusters of medical professionalism apply to many other professions including the community disability practitioner's.

Professional Identity and Values

My profession as a community disability practitioner involves supporting and implementing initiatives for persons with developmental disabilities. My profession is not unionized or centrally regulated. However, some organizations that hold me accountable include my organization, the Alberta Council of Disability Services, Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD), the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (OPGT), Alberta Health Services, to mention but a few. I interact with multiple professions in my line of work including social workers, addictions counsellors, psychologists, police officers, lawyers, judges, PDD case workers, nurses, and so on. The profile of individuals on my caseload influences the professions I interact with more frequently. Most of my interactions with these listed professions typically involves meetings and discussions advocating for individuals with developmental disabilities assigned to my caseload. Pre-Covid-19, most of these interactions happened in person. Recently, these interactions have been over zoom meetings, phone calls, messenger, and emails. Professionalism in and beyond my workplace is critical for maintaining my integrity, especially my integrity on social media.

Social Media: The Double-Edged Sword

Social media is a double-edged sword, therefore, a proactive approach in maintaining professionalism, especially online, must be adopted (Cleary et al., 2013). Social media provides avenues to reach a substantial number of people in real-time, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the content disseminated. One must be thoughtful and thorough when deciding posting online content as retracting the post is almost impossible. What constitutes an appropriate social media presence varies across industries. An appropriate social media presence of an artist will differ from a politician’s or a medical doctor’s. Therefore, people must pay attention to the policies and guidelines governing their specific occupations and organizations in determining an appropriate social media presence. One must check if the online content aligns with the professional guidelines of their profession before leaving an electronic footprint. When in doubt, one is safer not to post.

My Social Media Audit

I performed a social media audit to evaluate my current online presence. I compiled my findings in the video below.

General social media guidelines for mental health professionals include content credibility, professional ethics and networking practices, personal and patient privacy, legal concerns (Ventola, 2014). My organization specifically requires having separate social media accounts for work-related purposes. The contents posted or communicated through these work accounts have to meet certain requirements including credibility of information posted, nondisclosure of identifiable client information, professional boundaries with clients and staff, to mention but a few. These requirements also apply to my personal account, especially with the shareability of information in this shrinking world.

I am not obligated to speak in public, however, my long-term career would include significant health promotion and advocacy. I intend maximizing the network potential of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flipboard, Medium, Blogspot, blog in an e-portfolio, and so on, in reaching my target audience. I will be using the "7 Practical Tips and Guidance" outlined by Joshi et al. (2020) in maintaining an appropriate online presence.

References

Cleary, M., Ferguson, C., Jackson, D., & Watson, R. (2013). Editorial: social media and the new e-professionalism. Contemporary Nurse : a Journal for the Australian Nursing Profession, 45(2), 152–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10376178.2013.11002735

Collier R. (2012). Professionalism: what is it?. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, 184(10), 1129–1130. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.109-4211

Joshi, K. G., & Gehle, M. E. (2019). The role of social media in private practice. Psychiatric Times, 36(5). https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/role-social-media-private-practice

Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103576/pdf/ptj3907491.pdf