Blogging---what crosses the line?

[itsnowornever]

I LOVE reading nurses and doctors blogs! They crack me up, make me wanna cry with them and in general motivate me to hurry and finish school. The insight they give, the ideas, the way to handle things is great. I have some great stories myself and fellow students have often told me, "You should really blog about this! It's hilarious"...BUT I haven't and dont think I will. I'm afraid that a future employer would find out and BAM I'd be done. Even if I made up an email and never used real names I'd be scared. I was just wondering how these blogs that are already out there avoid HIPPA problems? Some cases are very specific. How do they do it?

[Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN]

I thought as long as it doesn't have identifiable patient information, then it's ok?

Problem is that you could leave out all of the typical PHI and still end up posting enough details about the case that the patient and/or the facility could be identifiable.

[itsnowornever, BSN, RN]

Case in point---heard a story about something being stuck up a rectum the other day, if the details were blogged about, I'm sure that the patient would know they were talking about him/her. SOOOOOO....no blogging for me! LMAO! I'm just gonna stick to talking to my husband about my day.

[Jory, MSN, APRN, CNM]

A facility having a social media policy, is absolutely unnecessary as HIPAA already covers social media.

So many people think that if you don't mention the name or change the patient's name, that you are "in the clear" as far as HIPAA, not true.

Let me give you an example.

We had patient that suffered a horrible death from a very incompetent doctor who was one of those arrogant individuals that was ignoring every nurse on the floor who tried to tell him in advance, that the patient in trouble.

The next day, one of the nurses, without mentioning one detail about what happened, stated she had the night "from hell" at work...her place and unit of employment was clearly on her profile. She was assigned to the patient that died....who was her only patient, given the patient's fragile condition.

Well, she was friends with someone who was friends with the family, who saw the post on the nurse's friend's profile and KNEW that she was referring to their family member. It was reported to the hospital and the nurse was fired.

It was a HIPAA violation because the nurse had enough information on her profile so that the family member could tie her comment into the care of their family member, and they were not happy that the death of their loved one, caused her to have the night "from hell".

While HIPAA is not rocket science (and it really isn't), common sense goes a long way.