Feel sick with worry that a slip of the tongue was a violation....

I was talking to some RN's about my psych rotation....getting nursing school advice.. just said it was scary sometimes because some patients were violent. Said that a lady at X hospital (where my rotation was) was scary for us students because she knew a martial art and she was violent. didn't say any names or anything else about her that could identify her.... I feel like i'm going to throw up. This HIPAA stuff gets so confusing sometimes and it's hard sometimes to know what the line is. I am incredibly worried now. I didn't mean to do anything wrong. So upset....

Did you reveal her name, address, social security number, birth date, facility, age, insurance information, diagnosis, patient number, treating physician's name?

Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule

Here is some information as to what is the definition of breach of HIPAA: Breach Notification Rule

Schools certainly try and drive home the importance of patient confidentiality but sometimes facilities and schools can go overboard in 'claiming HIPAA" applies to everything from listing breakfast menus to what color shoes a patient is wearing. For the best information go to the source. (See links above)

I mentioned the facility because I had said where my clinical was. It is known to have violent patients.

Read the links I posted. If you said we had clinicals at Bellevue Psychiatric and were all afraid of a violent female patient. (definitely no) (unless the facility was predominantly a male patient facility and only had one female patient)

...and were all afraid of a reportedly violent female patient who said she knew martial arts...(not likely)

If you said we did our clinicals at Bellevue Psychiatric and were all afraid of Dr. Smith's 44 year old female patient from 49th street station with paranoid psychosis and schizophrenia who was refusing her Thorazine because she thought it impaired her ability to use the marital arts moves she learned personally from Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris....you can expect a phone call from your school and some remediation about patient confidentiality.

Since you don't bill for insurance it would be just patient confidentiality not HIPAA (see the links regarding covered entities). Either way it's a good time to review the HIPAA resources available to you online, the facilities patient privacy/confidentiality policies (that should have been provided to you when you oriented to the facility) and your school's policy on patient privacy/confidentiality (possibly located in your school handbook.

Thank you. My school has thoroughly scared the crap out of me already. I would never want to violate patient privacy, I just wanted to illustrate how we were scared sometimes. I do need to review the information.

The short answer is no, unless that facility has only 1 female patient. Good links provided by justbeachy, never hurts to review.

No problem. I think many schools (AND facilities) go overboard in scaring the peanuts out of their students/employees. Like the facilities that claim it is a HIPAA violation if you access your own medical records...very much not true.

IMO, you didn't violate HIPAA...but at the same time, never underestimate how little information it can take to identify a patient. Because you may find yourself unpleasantly surprised one day.

Good luck with the rest of school.