Information Systems in Healthcare
Information Systems in Healthcare
R360 Information Systems in Healthcare
RUA: We Can, But Dare We?
You are a nurse in the emergency room, working the Friday 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, and your evening has been filled with the usual mix of drunken belligerent teens, wailing babies, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations, falls, fractures, and the routine, regular congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. Your best friend is texting you from the concert that you had to miss tonight because you were scheduled to work, and you respond to her between care of patients, jealous that she is there, and you are not. “What a jerk to torture me like this!” you think to yourself.
It is now 2 a.m., and the medics radio once again, notifying you of an incoming motor vehicle accident victim, ETA of 5 minutes. You sigh and opt to use the restroom, rather than getting that much‐needed cup of coffee and prepare a room for your next patient. The medics roll in and begin to fill you in. The patient is a 28‐year‐old male, a passenger on a bus that was involved in a crash, leaving the vehicle overturned after rolling over an embankment. There were several fatalities among the bus passengers, and “this victim has remained unconscious, though his vitals are currently stable. As you start to focus on the patient, you take a second look. Can it be? It is! The lead singer, Jerod, from the band “Blue Lizards,” who you have adored since you first heard his voice! The band had just left the concert that you had missed last evening when the accident occurred. You quickly text your best friend . . . “Can you believe?” and she responds with “Yeah, right. PROVE IT.” So, you quickly snap a picture with your smartphone, when alone with the patient, and send it to her. Cannot hurt, right? Celebrities are “public property,” and that is a part of their life, right? Just for good measure, you snap a few more pictures of the unconscious singer in various stages of undress and then a shot of his home address, phone number, and demographic information from his electronic health record. You sit your phone down on the bedside table for a minute as you continue your assessment of the patient.
You will be making up the rest of the scenario based on the ending you choose. Choose an ending to the scenario, and construct your paper based on those reflections.
Choose one of the following outcomes:
1. A HIPAA violation occurs, and client data is exposed to the media.
2. A medication error has harmed a client.
3. A technology downtime that impacts patient care occurs, and an error is made.
4. A ransomware attack has occurred, and the organization must contemplate paying the ransom or lose access to patient data.
