Picture of wound?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Hypothetically speaking, if a nurse took a picture of a wound on an area such as a patients hand and there was no identifying information or anything else in the picture except for the actual wound, could that be a privacy (or some other) violation? I know it's not a HIPAA violation and honestly, I can't see what it would violate besides perhaps facility policy, but I"m curious what others think.

In this purely hypothetical situation the patient gave permission, no devices came near the patient and the photo was deleted right after she/he was done documenting.

The reason the nurse took the photo was to assist her in documenting the appearance of the wound as she hadn't seen anything like it before and wanted to be sure to accurately describe it.

Just curious. This nurse thought she was thinking on her feet and now she is second guessing herself.

Specializes in Transitional Nursing.

Thanks everyone. It was sort of a situation where she didn't want to have to dress the wound and then possibly undress it later and was trying to do what was ultimately best for the patient. I think she was thinking that simply by looking at the photo you wouldn't be able to tell what body part it was let alone who it belonged to and therefore wouldn't have been a big deal, since she was just trying to avoid having to dress and re-dress the wound, but she gets it now.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU, LTACH, Internal Medicine.
How do websites/Apps such as Figure1 make it work then? Not confronting what you're saying - just interested in how it is ok to upload a pic of injury/x-ray/illness to such a site that has a world-wide audience and it be OK??

No idea what "Figure 1" is, but one can upload and therefore make visible to whole world pretty much anything and everything on Facebook short of quite limited list of things. And for private emails (mostly used for the purposes I described) there are no even these restrictions. Also, there is CrowdMed, where people post all kinds of their private and HIPAA - protected medical info for everybody to see, download and use for whatever, and endless opportunities to consult physician (or someone posting as such) online, for free or $$, most of them allowing file download.

People do amazing number of stupid things in social networks and outside of them, from posting "adorable" pics of their naked babies (which can be then used by only God knows whom and how) to sending private info of any kinds and forms and shapes to complete strangers. Sometimes they run into trouble, to their great surprise. As long as they themselves and by their own will do stupid things, it remains their freedom to do so. You do not think much about giving your phone and email to that cute cashier for a coupon, don't you? Think again, because most kids in my 14 years old IT class can hack your credit having that and card number. They will be found out and caught soon enough by most banks, but they still can do it, and they are only 14 to 15 years old.

I enjoyed Crowdmed and got quite a high reputation there as a clinician but I was not feeling safe after a while because people started to send me stuff which was HIPAA - protected.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Burn, ICU.

I appreciate what the nurse was trying to do, but I'll add this thought to why I'd never take a picture on my personal phone: most phones attach all kinds of data to every picture. Time, date, GPS location, etc. So even if no patient data is visible, it could be stored with the image and could identify the patient if it was something like a home-health situation.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment