Social Media Policy and Code of Conduct
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre recognizes the value of social media platforms as vital resources to positively promote its mission and values, strategic plan, prevention & screening initiatives, recruitment activities, successes and initiatives, as well as a forum for engagement and the exchange of general information and feedback.
Our Hospital, along with our research arm, the Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute, has established and shall maintain an organizational presence on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. This presence will facilitate expanding communication opportunities for patients and families, physicians, employees, volunteers and other stakeholders in the communities served by our Hospital. The Communications & Engagement Department shall maintain and manage primary content and images on official Hospital social media accounts. The Communications & Engagement Department may identify individuals in other departments to be provided administrative access to Hospital social media accounts.
All social media content, including uses and disclosures of patient identifying information, shall comply with applicable Hospital policies, Code of Conduct and confidentiality agreements, as well as regulations, and standards.
The Communications & Engagement Department at our Hospital moderates all comments and reserves the right to remove comments from its social media sites. We also reserve the right to block or remove access to individuals whose comments are repeatedly removed as per below.
Comments of the following nature (and others deemed inappropriate) will be removed:
- Personal health information of a third party individual.
- Personal attacks and name calling.
- Language that is threatening, obscene, profane and that contains hate speech, degrades others or is abusive.
- Libelous statements, such as allegations of criminal activity or comments that unfairly harm person’s reputation.
- Use of an offensive username or of foul language.
- Trolling, spamming, or postings that are of a promotional nature.
- Material copied from other sources (exceptions include the use of brief quotes where the source is acknowledged).
Social media participants should refrain from including personal information such as address or phone number in comments.
The Communications & Engagement Department will facilitate the posting of information, links, comments and material to the Hospital’s social media accounts on behalf of other Departments, Programs and Services. Requests for social media postings will be processed through the Communications & Engagement Intake process.
Employees should be aware that our Hospital may observe content and information made available by employees through social media sites outside of those managed by our Hospital. Employees should use best judgment in posting material to any social media platforms, including personal ones, that may be considered inappropriate or harmful to our Hospital, its employees or patients.
Any employee who violates this policy will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment. All violations of this policy will constitute grounds for immediate suspension of access to the network. In the case the members of the professional staff, they will face the same penalties as above, up to and including suspension or termination of privileges. Violation of this policy by students and partners may result in their access being revoked.
