You're browsing the web one day and come across some videos that expose girls private parts when they're on the exam table. How do you figure they got there.
The patients were denied the right to medical care unless they agreed to be exposed in public
We reserve the right to publish videos of you on the exam table for educational purposes†was hidden so deep into the fine print that some patients signed it in a hurry with tired eyes and thought they were seeing things
The patients were re-compensated for the loss of their medical privacy so they never had to work again
They put the patients on video without their knowledge and snuck it on YouTube and no one has reported it yet
HIPAA makes an allowance for practitioners who film their patients for public education
All the above
None of the above
How in the name of God did they get these people to agree to be filmed during their medical exams?
They show the girls' faces so you might recognize them and show close-up pictures of their private parts to display on YouTube?
All I had to do was sign into my account and tell them I'm eighteen or older to access these videos.
They show graphic pictures that I didn't really need to see. In one of them, the man doing the lady partsl exam actually addresses the patient by Ms……..†followed by her last name which really gave me the creeps.
Some but not all these videos had drawings of girls private parts which is all they really need to educate the anyone including nurses and medical students.
Any creepy eight-year-old can create a YouTube account and pretend they're eighteen or older. Any peeping tom can gain access to these pictures that show the private parts of girls in their practitioners offices and if you ever knew any sex predators, this whole idea would creep you out.
The girls exposed on the exam table never show the viewers that they know they're being filmed outside of one patient who smiles and holds a flower and who only has her face exposed to the camera.
When I was in training and we used patients for educational purposes it meant we were all inside of a shut curtain or closed up room protecting the patient's dignity.
In my general goings about I meet up with people who have no clue about a patient's right to privacy.
They seem to think it's ludicrous when you ask them to mind their own business.
They seem to think it's their own decision whether they invade someone's privacy depending on whether THEY are okay with it and sometimes depending on whether they sacrificed their own privacy and sometimes because of their own self-importance.
One person even told me, Well you have to talk about it,†when I refused to talk about my patients during a gathering. In this case, they expected me to think I was the poor little victim that has to talk about it.â€
The publics' ignorance and insensitivity are only being made worse by the availability of publicized pap smears. They make no mention of the fact that these patients are vulnerable.
They do not explain to their vast audience how the right to privacy and dignity are tied in with videos of patients' exams.
Maybe someone could clear up my confusion as far as how a medical office can reserve the right to go public with the care of their patients and include identifying information like the patients faces. I know there has to be some detailed process these people follow before they publish a video.
I would like to think the patients watch the videos first and then give their permission for them to be published.
I would like to think HIPAA requires the permission form for these pictures to be published to be separate from all other forms.
I do hope the entitlement of these practitioners to publish these videos is not because of some statement buried somewhere in a legal agreement that someone signs when they desperately need care.
I do hope You can't share pictures of me†is still an option when they expose someone's private parts on YouTube.
..I live in a world where practitioners violate their clients confidentiality and where peoples' private information is distributed across the countryside without their consent and where people argue with me about my right to keep my patients' information confidential.
Exactly what world are you living in?! Where is this occuring, as status quo??
Reading through the responses I am shocked- OP intent might have been for personal reasons but this is a topic that Nurses should take seriously as it is part of our oath to protect patients. Free consent must be given: in many cases undue influence, fraud, or misrepresentation are used to obtain consent.
I contend that as nurses we participate in this privacy sham every day- we withhold communication from family members to show that we respect privacy. Meanwhile the medical and legal community will do what they want with your medical information.
The first time I heard of this was the "anonymous" HIV testing- just give your date of birth and zip code: Using these two pieces of information it is possible to determine who you are. Nurses help to perpetuate the lie (and still do) by telling patients their testing was anonymous because they did not question the instructions they had been given. http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pdf
I now know that the idea of medical privacy is a fraud all together. Your Board of Nursing can request your medical records, if you don't give "free consent" they will revoke your license. You also have to give consent if you want to adopt a child.
I'm sure there are many more examples of how the concept of medical privacy is false... I find it amazing how many Nurses have expressed complete disbelief in this concept in the modern world where everything (including this post) is tracked and can be used against you.
I'm sure there are many more examples of how the concept of medical privacy is false... I find it amazing how many Nurses have expressed complete disbelief in this concept in the modern world where everything (including this post) is tracked and can be used against you.
What specifically in the responses in this thread do you find shocking? I've only expressed disbelief regarding patients who are having pap smears and similar procedures done, being unknowingly filmed by their healthcare providers, and those providers being dumb enough to post the end result on YouTube. I also find it hard to believe that OP or any other healthcare professional is being pestered by numerous unnamed someones on a regular basis, to reveal information about their patients. That's pretty much what I think most people have been saying in their responses.
Generally speaking, I don't think that many people would argue that information stored on a computer that communicates with the "outside world" is ever completely safe. There's always a risk that a system may be breached by someone not authorized to access it. Also, yes what we write here can be traced back to us but I fail to see how that relates to the issue of semi-nude or nude "patients" on YouTube.
I contend that as nurses we participate in this privacy sham every day- we withhold communication from family members to show that we respect privacy. Meanwhile the medical and legal community will do what they want with your medical information.
If I withhold information from a patient's family members it's because my patient has expressed that wish. I don't see how that counts as "participating in a privacy sham". It's my duty as a nurse.
I don't at all agree with the statement that the medical and legal communities are allowed to do what they want with my medical information. I have laws in my country which protects patient's rights and you have HIPAA.
I do agree that it's wrong that healthcare professionals in the US seem to be offered less protection from HIPAA than a non-healthcare professional (from what I understand). In my opinion, all the information the BoN (and public) should have access to is whether a nurse's medical provider consider them safe to practice nursing. A nurse's specific diagnosis or condition should in my opinion, be his or her business. But OP's post and this thread hasn't really been about this issue?!
I didn't call anyone out specifically as there are so many responses which seem to be taunting and dismissive of the OP question.
Your response specifically questioned the OP motive for watching the videos; you then go on to assume/infer that the OP actively looked for them. You are filling in several blanks in order to stick to the script you have been given... "your privacy is important to us".
You go on to say that a breach is possible for personal information- again you are assuming the "anonymous" information provided from the EMR is truly anonymous.
In the US we withhold information from family members unless given permission to give information to the family members. This is a privacy sham as we tell the husband calling to report an illness that we cannot speak to him... yet our hospitals release information to other entities without having true consent from a patient.
Your last paragraph you do seem to admit there is a flaw in the system- it really does not matter that you have an opinion about what might be better, only that as a professional you critically think about the flaws that are real.
I do think the migration of learning videos onto Youtube and/or other viewing forms that are easily available to the general public is an interesting topic in itself. Especially the older pre-Youtube stuff where I am assuming the consented participant never had any idea that technology would one day exist where their exam could be readily view-able to anyone with the click of a button. I would assume that consents these days would include some sort of "hey, this might end up on the internet" byline.
I just typed in "pediatric assessment" and many videos appeared on youtube, including shirtless pre-pubescent girls...
The upper half of a prepubescent girl's body looks pretty much the same as a prepubescent boy's upper body. Wearing a bra before you have breasts seems rather unnecessary in my opinion. I don't think that showing the upper body for a legitimate purpose, is in itself particularly shocking.
The reservation I have is that a child can't really consent and might not understand that once something's posted on the internet, it's there for all eternity and you have no control over who watches it and for what reason/purpose they do so.
Your response specifically questioned the OP motive for watching the videos; you then go on to assume/infer that the OP actively looked for them. You are filling in several blanks in order to stick to the script you have been given... "your privacy is important to us".
I don't believe that you can watch several of these videos without actively searching for them. Even if you find one by accident (perhaps a very misleading title on a YouTube clip), you can stop the video. You don't need to keep on watching it. So yes, I did wonder why OP did it when it seemed to upset him/her to watch them.
As well as huge quantities of amusing, educational, interesting and entertaining stuff there are also many truly ugly things (much worse than what's been discussed here), on the internet. I tend to stay away from the latter, i.e. things that I have no desire to be subjected to and I choose to only look for the former.
You go on to say that a breach is possible for personal information- again you are assuming the "anonymous" information provided from the EMR is truly anonymous.
No information stored on a computer is ever entirely safe. Some institutions, organizations and individuals are better at protecting their information/systems than others, but making it 100% safe just isn't possible. However, it's in my opinion entirely possible for a healthcare professional to abide by the laws and ethics that guide our profession.
They may have consented to being videotaped...but I wonder if they were aware it was going to be put on YouTube.
I might have done something like that in college, thinking it was going to be used in a classroom setting. But I would have flipped out if I found out it got out on the internet...luckily I never had to learn that lesson!
Public sharing of videos should be an entirely different consent!
Lol. Videos of "girls' private parts" just came up during your normal Google search.
I just hate it when I'm searching for that
I did not type in "girls private parts." I don't think you could really unearth these videos by typing that in. This is making me sound more devious than I really am. If these were Media videos and the patients don't know they're being filmed I will report them.
RNsRWe, ASN, RN
3 Articles; 10,428 Posts
Exactly what world are you living in?! Where is this occuring, as status quo??