Nurse looked at my Facebook-HIPAA violation ?

[PlainB]

I hope it was okay to register here as I am not a nurse however I am familiar with medical terminology because I was previously interested in the field. I suffer from depression and was recently hospitalized at a psych hospital to get my meds back on track. It wasn't a big deal, I was in and out within a week.

Anyway, I had really good rapport with one of the nurses. He was actually the only one who I felt did his job well and knew what he was doing. Well after he gave me my meds and we chatted for a bit (the usual how are you sleeping, any thoughts of harming yourself etc.) I went back up to the nurse's station to ask for water and he was turned the other way...looking at his phone-he had pulled up my Facebook page and was going though my pics! I was shocked of course but I tried to act like I didn't notice. When he saw me he put the phone in his pocket really fast.

It doesn't bother me, but I'm genuinely curious-is it a HIPAA violation for a nurse to simply look at a patient's FB-or only f they add them?

Thanks in advance and again I hope it's okay for me to be here.

[bitter_betsy, BSN]

I'm not a nurse - just a student - but isn't our job to make sure that we don't miss any cues from our patients? Maybe a little on the odd side, but the OP was a patient at an inpatient facility "to get meds back on track". So many times people that need a little extra help cry out in ways that are often overlooked. Maybe this Nurse was just doing a little investigating making sure that there wasn't anything else that should be addressed (for example images of cutting or other harmful activities).

[BeckyESRN]

During nursing school, on my youth psych rotation, the staff would regularly check patient's MySpace profiles(on a desktop, because we didn't really have smart phones then!). One of the nurse's said that they realized a patient was suicidal based on the posts, patient had been denying suicidal ideation previously. So, maybe it was "work related"?