HIPAA violation

Published

Okay so a news article was posted about an obituary on a patient and my coworker shared it on social media.

I commented that I was sad he died and one of the other workers comments it was time to go and mentioned what med he was on. I agreed to the statement.

I got put on leave because of a HIPAA violation and now I’m freaking out that I’m going to get fired. I had no intention of violating HIPAA and I know that’s not an excuse and I should know better.

Are HIPAA violations always fireable offenses or do companies ever give you a second chance? I’ve absolutely learned from this and I’ve deleted all my social media.

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It's hard to say what will happen. Where I work it's immediate termination despite your employment history. And yikes! It was his "time to go"?!! That was a callous statement at best. ?

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Specializes in Quality Management.

Call your med mal ask to speak to a lawyer and or go TAANA American association of nurse attorneys https://taana.org/ talk to a attorney from there and don’t post anymore details here as it’s a public forum and your employer could be reading this. Best of luck

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Thank you for the comments. I ended up getting a verbal warning and was allowed to keep my job. Lesson learned!

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Pediatric Float, PICU, NICU.
45 minutes ago, thatgirl37 said:

Thank you for the comments. I ended up getting a verbal warning and was allowed to keep my job. Lesson learned!

I'm curious if your co-worker who went as far as to mention a medication he was on got as lucky as you did.

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