Hi there. Nearly a year ago, we posted a reminder that medical advice was not allowed per rule 1. It's our first rule. It's #1. There's a reason for that.

About 6 months ago, I posted a reminder because people couldn't bring themselves to read the previous post.

In it, we announced that we would be changing how we enforce rule 1. We shared that we would begin banning medical advice for one week (7 days).

However, despite this, people INSIST on not reading the rules, our multiple stickied posts, or following just good basic common sense re: providing nursing care/medical advice in a virtual space/telehealth rules and laws concerning ethics, licensure, etc.

To that end, we are once again asking you to stop breaking rule #1. Effective today, any requests for medical advice or providing medical advice will lead to the following actions:

• For users who are established members of the community, a 7 day ban will be implemented. We have started doing this recently thinking that it would help reduce instances of medical advice. Unfortunately, it hasn't.
• NEW: For users who ARE NOT established members of the community, a permanent ban will be issued.

Please stop requesting or providing medical advice, and if you come across a post that is asking for medical advice, please report it. Additionally, just because you say that you’re not asking for medical advice doesn’t mean you’re not asking for medical advice. The only other action we can do if this enforcement structure is ineffective is to institute permanent bans for anyone asking for or providing medical advice, which we don't want to do.