Published
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.
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 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.
No information stored on a computer is ever entirely safe.
I will have you know that I am all done watching these videos.
If I want to have an accurate idea of what is included in them and create a thread because I wrongly think HIPAA is tied in then I need to unearth a few of them to prove that they do in fact include graphic pictures.
As far as what one poster said about me thinking "HIPAA is a joke," well we can start a new thread to talk about that.
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!
This is what I was trying to explain.
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.
Thank you for explaining this in a way where there is no room for distortion.
Many people WANT to participate in the educating of both health care providers and the general public. Often this is because they've lost a family member to a disease that is more easily treated through regular screenings- ie, colon cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer. Sometimes just knowing that they helped an NP learn to do a more thorough exam or helped a 20 year old work up the courage to get her first gyn exam is enough.
This helps with getting my thread back on track. I hadn't even thought of details like these and there might be other readers who hadn't either.
OP, I see you listed USA on your profile. From what you state above, it sounds like you're in some third world country. I may be naive, but what part of the USA are you in that patient's PHI is freely distributed without consent? I've never encountered any physician/nurse/etc. or medical establishment that did not take HIPAA seriously and just outright, blatantly ignored it.
You were not there when I was studying HIPAA and having it trigger enough rage to send me through the roof. If no one in the USA "blatantly ignored" the right to privacy then HIPAA law would not need to be written.
When you say you "may be naive," well, I have met health workers who violate confidentiality and who lie to their clients about it. I have gotten numerous lectures from people about certain ones to stay away from. This is happening right here in the USA.
"If the offense is committed with the intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm."
DIRECT QUOTE FROM http://www.ehcca.com/presentations/HIPAA3/malone_2.pdf
What?? They have to explain this to health workers like it isn't common sense??
You were not there when I was studying HIPAA and having it trigger enough rage to send me through the roof. If no one in the USA "blatantly ignored" the right to privacy then HIPAA law would not need to be written.When you say you "may be naive," well, I have met health workers who violate confidentiality and who lie to their clients about it. I have gotten numerous lectures from people about certain ones to stay away from. This is happening right here in the USA.
"If the offense is committed with the intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm."
DIRECT QUOTE FROM http://www.ehcca.com/presentations/HIPAA3/malone_2.pdf
What?? They have to explain this to health workers like it isn't common sense??
I think you might be missing some of the broader scope of why HIPAA was enacted -- which was essentially to protect patients against corporations accessing and then using medical information against the patient to raise premiums, deny coverage, target for specific types of advertising, etc. The fact that Nurse Sally now cannot tell everyone that patient Billybob has the clap without facing serious repercussions is kind of a side benefit. ie. you're essentially arguing individual morality vs. corporate "morality".
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.
You are making the assumption that these are patients. If they are "reality Media" videos, then these are likely paid actors.
I think you might be missing some of the broader scope of why HIPAA was enacted -- which was essentially to protect patients against corporations accessing and then using medical information against the patient to raise premiums, deny coverage, target for specific types of advertising, etc. The fact that Nurse Sally now cannot tell everyone that patient Billybob has the clap without facing serious repercussions is kind of a side benefit. ie. you're essentially arguing individual morality vs. corporate "morality".
Yes, its nice to know that nurses keep patient confidentiality now that HIPPA has been enacted (Sarcasm)... This law has only scared Nurses...
Example: In my friends ICU room where she is vented- another friend asks the nurse "how is she doing"- nurses reply "due to HIPPA I can't discuss her condition" (Which is where I get into the nurses role in playing part of this make believe).... Before HIPPA we would say things like "As well as could be expected".... We always kept confidentiality prior to this law- its a shame we forget that we hold standards beyond mere laws
Yes, its nice to know that nurses keep patient confidentiality now that HIPPA has been enacted (Sarcasm)... This law has only scared Nurses...Example: In my friends ICU room where she is vented- another friend asks the nurse "how is she doing"- nurses reply "due to HIPPA I can't discuss her condition" (Which is where I get into the nurses role in playing part of this make believe).... Before HIPPA we would say things like "As well as could be expected".... We always kept confidentiality prior to this law- its a shame we forget that we hold standards beyond mere laws
I think you are misunderstanding me. Historically, HIPAA was thought needed essentially because insurance companies of all stripes were using non-pertinent patient medical history to deny coverage. Not because medical professionals as a whole had no moral standards and couldn't keep their mouths shut.
Every institution (and individual, really) has its own interpretation of HIPAA and it sucks when institutions or people choose to interpret HIPAA so strictly like the example that you presented.
Edit - and in my personal life, I have never been denied medical information about my loved ones. However, our hospital had an incident fairly recently where three nurses were terminated and reported to the BON for offensively speaking about a patient while in a full elevator. But now we are getting off topic!
Alnitak7
561 Posts
That is not what I said.
I'm sorry for my long-winded posts where some people misunderstand my meaning. I will have to work on that.
Just so you all know, I DO NOT think HIPAA is a joke and invasions of privacy sometimes make me furious.