Case Study: Taking A Nurse In The Emergency Room

The conclusion I decided to pick was conclusion number 3. In the scenario the nurse is working in the emergency room and has an extremely busy night. Patient after patient is coming in the emergency department for different thing and the nurse is becoming over whelmed. The nurse came into her shift already upset because her best friend is going to a concert to see their favorite band and she had to work. It turns out that the lead singer of the band ends up getting in a bad accident and ends up being the nurses’ patient for the night. The nurse decides to text her best friend and tell her who her patient is, when the best friend doesn’t believe her the nurse ends up taking picture and personal information from the patient without consent,

It protects all patients’ demographic information which includes past, present or future physical and mental issues. It also protect the patient information including identifying the individual’s name, DOB, address, and social security number (McGowan, 2012). .

By the nurse taking the unconscious patients picture without consent is a violation of privacy and is against HIPAA guidelines. She also took his phone number and address for her own personal use. She basically broke every rule when it comes to HIPAA. By her posting the picture on facebook she made her crime open to the public, and identified who her patient was. According to the American medical association violator of HIPAA can be penalized and have to pay a fee. There are different criteria’s and different levels of violators according to HIPAA. The lowest level are those people who violate HIPAA and didn’t know they did, they have a minimum fee of $100 for each violation committed and an annual max fee of $25,000 for those people who keep violating under the same level. The second level are for those people who violate with reasonable cause and didn’t do so to willful neglect will have a fee of $1,000 per violation, with an annual maximum of $100,000 for repeat violation under the same level. Thirdly are for those who do it willful but the violation is corrected within the required time period that was mandated have to pay a fee of $10,000 per violation, with

Many people like the nurse in my scenario like to vent on social media about how hard their day was which is ok but in the healthcare field you have to be careful with how much information you share about your day. According to HIPAA a healthcare worker can get in trouble even if the patients name wasn’t said but the illness was disclosed. This is in order to protect the patient which the patient has a right to. Another disadvantage is the distraction that comes with the smartphone. Many people have different games, social media outlets that may distract them from doing their job which is caring for their patient. Instead of keeping up with your charting the healthcare worker might be looking at their facebook or playing candy crash. This distraction effect your patients care and your patient’s