Confused about HIPAA and internet posting...HELP

[tammy1974]

As I read through some of the posts on this site, and as I remember what my instructor said the first day of school--She made it clear that under no circumstances were we allowed to post anything about clinicals on the internet, (Facebook, twitter, anything). Even something as innocent as "I went to clinical today" would result in dismissal from the program as it was considered a HIPAA violation.

Would posting on this site, e.g. looking for information, or help from peers about a situation constitute a violation?

I don't want to violate any rules?

[living on faith]

Gosh everyone~ I would really... like to know the answer to these questions. Look forward to hearing from some much more experienced students than me on this.

[morningdew]

Wow I didn't realize that posting "I have clinicals today!" is a HIPPA violation...did she mention which part of HIPPA you would be in violation of by posting that? I'm curious to know.

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

I don't see how saying I went to clinicals is a hipaa violation. You are not giving away any identifiable information about your patient.

I mean stories about patients are posted on here all the time, especially in the nursing general forum.

Maybe they are trying to error on the side of caution and saying not to do any talking period to avoid people having problems.

I mean if I say I go to this and that college, we have clinicals at this hospital, I had a patient that was age 55, was on cardiac unit, was in for heart transplant and gave details about his situation. Although you might not have said the patients name and birth date, if a nurse works at that hospital on the cardiac unit and comes to this board they might be able to know what patient you are talking about. So there is where it can get sketchy.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

Agree with the others about "I went to clinical today" as NOT being a HIPAA violation. Sounds like your school doesn't trust the students to know the difference.

Some practicing nurses don't seem to either know the difference either, as shown by some of the news stories posted about nurses getting fired due to facebook status updates revealing too much info. The prevailing speculation is that a co-worker who is friending on facebook is the person doing the violation reporting. However, unless you have your page locked down tight, people can still see what's on your page. It's a quirk of Facebook. You *must* have every single privacy setting set to "Friends Only" to avoid it. If you don't, you are asking for trouble.

I post if I like my rotation or not, but I've never posted where I'm doing the clinical or anything related to what happens in clinical on my FB page.

[Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN]

I think the instructors either don't know what HIPAA is, or they are using it to keep you from posting negative information about the nursing school.

HIPAA is a very specific act. It has NOTHING to do with where a person works or has clinical...