A picture of neglect

[Mskararay]

Im a new cna.

Another new aid and I came across a resident who we thought was neglected. In carding for the resident the other aid asked if pictures should be taken as out charge nurse was out of the building.

Pictures were sent to the charge nurse, I reported to her the skin condition the resident had and the pics were shown to the oncoming shifts aids and then deleted.

The facility fired myself and the other aid claiming that we broke protocol and should have gone over our charge nurses head, and then for breaking hipaa. Even though I didn't take the pictures or even have my phone on me, because I told the other aid yes pictures should be taken, I was just as guilty.

What will happen to my licence? Will I ever be employable again?

[TriciaJ, RN]

If you saw anything of concern with a patient, you should have told your charge nurse. If you have reason to believe the charge nurse isn't taking something seriously that should be, you need to talk to your director of nursing.

Most facilities will absolutely not allow any photos to be taken of anyone. That is because there is no way they can control what becomes of them and they are a huge HIPAA violation. Deleting them after the fact isn't much of a mitigator.

As for your "license" I don't know what state you are in, but typically CNAs aren't considered to be "licensed" in the first place. You may want to check with the Board of Nursing or whomever in your state oversees the certification of CNAs. Talk to them about what happened, what you learned and what you can do to maintain your certification. When applying for a new job you'd probably be better off coming clean about what happened and what you learned.

Good luck.

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

Our facility kept photographs of all wounds upon first documentation and then took weekly pictures to document the healing status. HOWEVER...these pictures were ONLY taken with a camera that dwelled on the unit and had no Internet capability. The camera was plugged into a photo printer and the photographs were placed in the hard copy chart and never downloaded into the EHR.