Hi everyone. I am currently a second semester nursing student and this morning I attended a meeting with the dean of our nursing program where I was informed that I had committed a HIPAA violation and was consequently placed on academic probation for the remainder of my program. There were four people involved in the situation, and all of us were placed on probation. I was not aware that what I did constituted a violation and I have the opportunity to challenge this decision so I wanted to get the opinion of others to help me decide what to do.
The story is long so I'll only explain my role in the situation.
A friend in my study group was at her clinical site. She sent a text to our study group asking what we would do if another student in our clinical group was saying that they were very overwhelmed and had thoughts of committing suicide. She did not give any identifying information other than the fact that this person was in her clinical group. I advised her as to what I thought she should do. She later responded that she and another student approached their clinical instructor and the clinical instructor took the student that was struggling to the ER and they had the potential to be placed on an involuntary 72 hour hold. At no time was this person's identity disclosed and I did not know who we were talking about.
On a different day, I was commiserating with another student about how hard school is with kids and work and I said that I had heard that a student in *my friend's name*'s clinical group had expressed that they were overwhelmed and threatening to kill themselves. We basically just talked about how bad we felt that someone in our class was feeling that way and that if we knew who it was we would do our best to support them.
Long story short, that was the extent of my involvement. It got back to our professors that this was being discussed and they were extremely unhappy which is why we had to attend that meeting today. So to those of you that are much more familiar with HIPAA laws, does this sound like I violated it to you? Thanks for any input you can offer.
ooh, careful about printing out a thread on an anonymous forum when you do not know the true identities of anyone. There is no way to truly prove people are who they are. Also may not help your case too much talking about something on an anonymous forum.
I do wish you best of luck tomorrow. Hope you can clear things up and continue on with your career
I decided against printing out the thread for the reasons you described. Hopefully I will hear something by the end of this week.
ooh, careful about printing out a thread on an anonymous forum when you do not know the true identities of anyone. There is no way to truly prove people are who they are. Also may not help your case too much talking about something on an anonymous forum.
Neverminding the fact that none of us are able to give you legal advice per our TOS. So while the participants in this thread may be versed in HIPAA, we're not lawyers (or if we are nurse attorneys, we're not practicing law on the forum). So this thread isn't going to carry as much weight in your argument as you'd hope.
Are you sure you're even going to a real school? Some of these places just want your money and are not even accredited. You should print this thread and show it to them so they can learn how to spell HIPAA. If they forget, they should just remember what it stands for.
I had suggested she print the thread and show it to them, but the points made against it are good ones.
Still...one has to wonder how this school administration arrived at the conclusions they did. Waiting for updates!
RNsRWe: I can see why you would suggest it. But I would be too worried for the OP. Even on an anonymous forum, it could be twisted against the OP, used against the OP. I do wonder about the administration, I would think that they would just have said "no more gossip, etc" Or even said to them, I know you are concerned about so and so, but let's respect so and so's privacy.
It's actually a very well respected school in our area. I have a feeling that the disciplinary documents were typed up by a secretary, not one of the faculty in question. Clearly, she's not very familiar with the terminology.
Sorry I didn't update sooner. For some reason I stopped getting message notifications on this thread. Anyway, I haven't heard anything since submitting my appeal last week. One of the other parties involved also submitted an appeal but she did it on Thursday. They called her to let her know that they have come to a decision but she won't find out until their scheduled meeting on Tuesday.
I think they are trying to get us on the fact that the "victim" was initially expressing his feelings during clinicals. While we are at the clinical sites, we are considered covered entities. So even though he was sharing his feelings as a friend, not a patient, they are trying to twist that into confidential information. That's the only thing I can think of.
During the disciplinary meeting she pretty much said that we cannot talk about anyone else's health conditions, doesn't matter who they are. The administrators told us that if there was ever a HIPAA violation it could result in the school being banned from the clinical site which, obviously, would cause major problems for the school. Therefore, I have a feeling that instead of trying to teach us exactly what does/doesn't constitute a violation, they are just trying to make us so scared to violate it that we don't talk about anything.
Just curious was the ER a part of the clinical site that you were attending? Maybe I missed it somewhere else in the thread but I don't remember reading if the clinical site was also the same hospital as the ER? It doesn't sound like your role was a problem but do you know if any of the other students could have participated in some form of a violation? Because you don't know exactly how it got back to the administration, right?
Also curious if the student who was hospitalized is reacting badly to the situation and has initiated this in some way?
I will be starting nursing school in the Fall so I am extremely curious about this.
I realize I may be the dissenting opinion here, but I would be very careful in this particular situation. While I don't agree with the schools methods, there reasoning may be sound.
HIPPA protects patients. Once this student became a patient, and a public discussion occurred about him/her becoming a patient, HIPPA may come into play. Even though you did not identify this person by name, the fact that so many identifiable items were discussed (her school, class, study group) make him/her fairly easily identifiable. As nursing students who work in the clinical setting where this person may have been treated, you could be on a slippery slope.
I'll give and example. Say a celebrity was admitted to your facility. You are not treating the individual but you hear some information about their treatment. A reporter finds out that the certain celebrity is in the facility and questions you. Anything you say about that person, even without clear identifiers, even in the hypothetical, may be deemed as a HIPPA violation.
I am not saying you were right or wrong here, I'm just saying to be careful. And if you choose to bring legal action against the school, you better be damn sure you can defend your position.
Best of luck.
Michael Isaacs BSN RN CEN CPEN - Sent from my iPhone using allnurses
Anonymous6578
17 Posts
I decided against printing out the thread for the reasons you described. Hopefully I will hear something by the end of this week.