HIPPA violation concern

Nurses HIPAA

Published

Hey all! I'm a new first seamester student and I have a HIPPA question. If I mentioned to a family member of mine that a patient at a clinical site was abused by family, is that a violation? No names or any identifying markers were used. I'm a little panicked that I messed up. Please help!!

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.
Yea, you messed up.....bit is a serious federal medical privacy issue....

You might want to consider a different career

You do not obviously know what you do not know...

I would just ignore this one OP.

Specializes in kids.
Chill...and stay away from too much caffeine. :woot:

You're just in your first seamester... you're still learning! Lesson learned! You'll be fine!

P.s.

BTW...It's not seamester! It's seamaster! :banghead:

OR..semester?

Yea, you messed up.....bit is a serious federal medical privacy issue....

You might want to consider a different career

You do not obviously know what you do not know...

Erm...that's way harsh and off-base. There is NO call for that negativity.

If you didn't give patient identifiers, you should be okay. HIPPA is a very nebulous and confusing concept - any time you say ANYTHING about a patient, there is a chance that who you are talking to could know them and identify them from the information you give.

That being said....we all do it, from what I can tell. I've been a CNA for three years and am in my 3rd semester of nursing school. Just about everyone will mention patients, you just have to be very careful and very aware of how you do it, and know it always carries a risk.

I never just spontaneously mention a patient. My rule of thumb (in addition to the obvious like no names) is that I will never mention them until they are discharged, and then I never give time indicators like, "last night..." or "last week..." I'll often think about how I can alter things to make it less likely someone can identify them (Instead of "this adorable little old confused lady..." I'll say, "this pleasantly confused patient...").

You said you mentioned she was abused, and you came into contact with her at "a clinical site". Do you have more than one clinical site? Did you mention which one? Did you mention her age or name? Did you mention her diagnosis? These would be dangerous things to pinpoint to anyone (but even if you did, just note it for future reference and be more cautious moving forward).

In nursing, you see all kinds of interesting, disturbing, or wonderful things you want to share. We are human, and sometimes we need to talk things through to process our feelings and learn. My best advice is always give yourself time to process your feelings, think about the minimum information you can give that could be used to identify a patient, and speak with extreme caution.

It gets easier and more natural with time.

Specializes in Med-surg, telemetry, oncology, rehab, LTC, ALF.

If discussing situations or patients (without using PHI) were considered a violation, then your nursing professors couldn't do their job.

Ignore some of the more negative comments here.

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