Hello, I am a Senior nursing student and I was kicked out of clinicals and made to repeat the course for a few issues that happened during the day. I would be lying if I said I wasn't as prepared as I should of been that day, but I believe what happened to me was incredibly unjust. I am accused of violating HIPAA because I let another student into my patients room to look at her ventilator. As students, we are always trying to learn and he has never seen a ventilator before. I thought this was a good opportunity to learn, so I asked my nurse BEFORE we entered the patient room if it was okay for him to enter my patients room and look at her ventilator, in which the nurse said it was fine to do. A few days later, I get an email telling me not to go to clinicals and meet with my supervision. They were also appalled that I had to ask my nurse one of the medications were that we were hanging, and I also accidentally withdrew 30 iu's instead of 3 iu's of insulin AT the med station, in which the nurse saw and said that was way too much, in which I agreed with, apologized, and moved on.
The nurse reported me to her supervisors, which then contacted my school and were absolutely disgusted with my performance. When I met with my supervision, they completely sided with the hospital and were cared more about the school's image and less about my side of the story. If another student entering my patients room with permission from the nurse was a HIPAA violation, shouldn't the nurse be punished as well because she was the one who gave me permission to do so? That being said, I was removed from the course, 7 months away from graduation and had to sit out nearly 4 months before I could retake the class and pushes my graduation date back. Is this a legitimate case of a HIPAA violation?
