Protected health information
In recent years, there have been many technological changes that are being used in various nursing sections. Protected health information (PHI) has been discovered to help both the patients and the nurses, including information relating to physical and psychological mental condition (Balestra, 2018). However, the patients are entitled to give out information about when to bring their payments for the services to be provided where this data is transferred or preserved via any available medium for future reference.
In the United States, a law is set to recognize their country’s’ national measures to safeguard the patient’s property, which is termed as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). When patients visit the healthcare facility, they are educated on its importance and are not allowed to disclose what they have already shared for personal privacy (Rouse, Biscobing, & Sutner, 2015). Therefore when sharing their personal information with us, they should tell the correct information and have great trust in us that we can keep it private hence offer better services where necessary.
Privacy, security, and confidentiality
In a nursing setting, privacy is defined as the ability to keep and not disclosing the patient’s information to other people. Security is termed to be a lack of restrictions and fear of change for the better. Confidentiality is when personal information is kept a secret by the people serving in the health care facility (Rouse, Biscobing, & Sutner, 2015). All these three features are crucial and needed while maintaining the patients’ data secured and protected. These aspects help the interdisciplinary team working in the health care facility in ensuring the patients‘ information is protected, secured, and kept confidential.
In the healthcare facility, the interdisciplinary team members are supposed to work closely together to ensure the key electronic health data is well protected. However, to achieve this, they need to highlight only the need to know figures and information where they discuss them in a secretive place that other people or friends cannot listen to (Balestra, 2018). The Electronic Health Record (E.H.R.) needs always to be either switched or logged off to avoid any person from accessing it, and the passwords and names need to be kept private and not shared with anyone.
Evidence related to the use of social media and PHI.
Whenever something like a photo or picture appears in social media, good or bad, since its usage is increasing daily, everyone who gets in will see it. It becomes hard to eliminate it from the media. Having the current technology on the rise, the interpersonal team members are supposed to be keener with all that we put on there and comment (Rouse, Biscobing, & Sutner, 2015). Therefore, avoiding talks about what happened on the internet or social media might reduce the occurrence of problems when we are at work.
At a given point, Diana, one of our team members, puts photos on social media with unprofessional comments about our health care facility. This behavior is highly discouraged as it reflects immoral behavior; hence, it is seen as something that is excluding one from the nursing career, such as putting harmful remarks concerning our place of work, criticizing other workmates, and bullying new workers.
When such members are caught with no reason for doing so, they are given a long-term break of five years. In our section, more than twenty people were given an interdisciplinary break at the beginning of last month for displaying unprofessional and unethical information in social media about our health care facility (Rouse, Biscobing, & Sutner, 2015). They were asked to provide evidence of where they had obtained the information and failed. There have been financial penalties of hundred dollars imposed on the nurses who misuse social media in various healthcare facilities.
Conclusion
To safeguard the health information, one should be keen on any kind of information, either verbal, the action of online posting. When discussing patient’s matters with teammates, consider who might be around.
References
Balestra, Melanie L, N.P., E.S.Q. (2018). Social media missteps could put your nursing license at risk. Alabama Nurse, 45(3), 18. Retrieved from http://library.capella.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.proquest.com%2Fdocview%2F2131795045%3Faccountid%3D27965
PRIVACY | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/privacy
Rouse, M., Biscobing, J., & Sutner, S. (2015, April 25). Establishes the first national standards in the United States to protect patients’ personal or protected health information (PHI). Retrieved from https://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/HIPAA
SECURITY | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/security
What is Protected Health Information? (2019, February 21). Retrieved from https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-is-protected-health-information/