Health Privacy Breach

 Health Privacy Breach

 Health Privacy Breach

Scenario 1

The social media posting presents both privacy and security issues. Regarding privacy issues, the posting contains information that is sufficient to identify a patient in the hospital. Although the posting does not contain direct identifiers such as names or addresses, it contains a specific description of a patient. According to Arrigoni et al. (2016) “nurses may breach confidentiality or privacy with information they post via social media sites…examples may include comments in which patients are described with enough sufficient detail to be identified, referring to patients in a degrading or demeaning manner, or posting videos or photos of patients” (p. 187). The post by the nurse in the scenario meets these criteria. The patient is described as a 400 lbs. intubated COPD patient who was being taken to the ICU. Such information is sufficient enough to pinpoint the specific patient being addressed. Regarding security issues, the post implies that the ICU nurses were being ‘divas’ and were whining a lot. The post then goes on to say ‘someone help.’ if one or some of the nurse’s followers on the social media platform are deranged or mentally unstable, they may translate the post seriously and go to ‘help’ the nurse in the hospital where she works. The deranged individuals will simply target the ICU nurses as the people who are ‘harming’ the nurse in the social media platform. If the deranged individuals are armed, the situation can be fatal.