This action could lead to potential risk for a patient the student nurse may be caring for. If administering medication was the task at hand then there is a risk that the wrong dose may be administered which may have a major effect on the patient. The effect of this error on the patient and their families could be disastrous and possibly fatal. The Code of Conduct for Nurses in New Zealand states under the standard 4.1 that a nurse must use appropriate care and skill when assessing the health needs of health consumers, planning, implementing and evaluating their care. In the above scenario this standard would not have been met. .
Another considerable risk would be a breach of confidentiality. In the present world of social media people often use their social networking page such as Facebook as a tool to express or share about their day. This offers a network of support in the case of a challenging day, where someone felt they needed to get it off their chest. Facebook friends most often respond with words of support and their own stories of bad days in the hope of cheering this person up and letting them know that these situations happen to everyone. It can be a very comforting tool for a person in their time of need. However if a student nurse chose to write about their day at work on Facebook and the writings revealed private details of a patient, the nurse would be breaching Principle 10 of the Privacy Act 1993. This principle states "An agency that holds personal information that was obtained in connection with one purpose shall not use the information for any other purpose unless the agency believes, on reasonable grounds". Because Facebook is a public domain there is the risk that a family member or a friend of this patient can become aware of the information that has been shared resulting in that person knowing things about the patient they are not meant to know and/or the family becoming distraught now that this information is out there for the public to see.