These are the new AHPRA guidelines, specifically to do with social media and “public health campaigns” and “public health messaging.” Sadly, they are just as bad, albeit phrased in a more subtle way, as the dreadful March 2021 position statement.
These guidelines have to go: the efficacy of the scientific method relies on Doctors and other medical health professionals being able to contradict public health campaigns and messaging from pharmaceutical companies. The health bureaucrats and politicians who design public health campaigns need to be kept accountable and Doctors in particular need to be free to speak their minds.
https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Resources/Social-media-guidance.aspx
Public health messages
While you may hold personal beliefs about the efficacy or safety of some public health initiatives, you must make sure that any comments you make on social media are consistent with the codes, standards and guidelines of your profession and do not contradict or counter public health campaigns or messaging. A registered health practitioner who makes comments, endorses or shares information which contradicts the best available scientific evidence may give legitimacy to false health-related information and breach their professional responsibilities. Practitioners need to take care when commenting, sharing or 'liking' such content if not supported by best available scientific evidence.
Example
A nurse regularly posts anti-vaccination views on her personal Facebook profile, including that vaccinations cause autism and other information which contradicts the evidence base and public health programs. Her professional standards, codes and guidelines make it clear that using evidence in the practice of her profession, as well as supporting public health initiatives, are part of her professional responsibilities.
A colleague regularly sees her posts and decides to look at the Code of conduct for nurses for guidance.
The code says: To promote health for nursing practice, nurses must understand and promote the principles of public health, such as health promotion activities and vaccination.' The code also says that nurses must 'understand and apply the principles of primary and public health, including health education, health promotion, disease prevention, control and health screening using the best available evidence in making practice decisions. The colleague decides to make a notification about the nurse's conduct to Ahpra.
Indeed, in a democracy, all publicly funded, public measures need to be open to debate. Particularly anything that is supposedly informed by science: what the ‘best’ science is at any one time is and must be open to debate, and those whose feet are on the ground, at the front-line of patient care, must be allowed to speak their minds.
This unaccountable position of health bureaucrats, deciding without input from Doctors what is the ‘best science,’ is not tenable in the long term.
H/T to Warren Ross, writer of Katoomba Review for his comment on the last article pointing me in the right direction for this info.
Love your work ! Thank you so much. Advent blessings to you n yours.