Patient confidentiality breach - dilemma

Spirit_2

Two things:
1)Contact the colleague by whatever means possible and say you have seen this and you wanted to let them know as it's publication was probably inadvertent but is a breach.

Tell them you will let the ward manager know as it is an error that could easily be made and all the team could do with a reminder that it is small matters that often cause complaints, and everyone is rightly hot on IG.

2) Tell the ward manager. Couch it in the same terms as above. If you haven't made contact, the ward manager will, and the breach will be resolved. This is highly unlikely to be career limiting in anyway whatsoever (unless this is a colleague with a poor record anyway).

MonkeySaving?

Spirit wrote: »

Two things:
1)Contact the colleague by whatever means possible and say you have seen this and you wanted to let them know as it's publication was probably inadvertent but is a breach.

Tell them you will let the ward manager know as it is an error that could easily be made and all the team could do with a reminder that it is small matters that often cause complaints, and everyone is rightly hot on IG.

Do NOT contact the colleague, talk to your manager and let them deal with it.

ska_lover

You have three choices:-
1) Grass them up to management - see how many friends this gets you at work
2) Have a quiet word with the person in question. As above there are repercussions to this.
3) Do nothing - pretend that you weren't petty enough to be poring over, and zooming in on someone elses photos.

Savvy_Sue

paddedjohn wrote: »

what is so confidential about someones name? any visitors would have seen the board anyway.

There's a difference between visitors seeing the board, and it being out in cyberspace. Plus more and more there is NOT a whiteboard with all names and beds on it in plain view.

We used to put the names of clients for whom we had letters waiting on a whiteboard, until an out of hours visitor commented on one name and asked after them, saying it was their cousin. That was a breach of confidentiality on the visitor's part, they should have known we couldn't give any information.

Mind you the very worst breach I saw was in an outpatient waiting area at the hospital: on a noticeboard (along with all the 'wash your hands with soap' posters) was an email with FULL details of a 'thank you' letter which had been sent - and by FULL details I mean the person's name, date of birth, address and date on which she'd attended the clinic! It only occurred to me when I got home how appalling that was, so I emailed. I think it got taken down fairly promptly after that!

scheming_gypsy

MonkeySaving? wrote: »

Do NOT contact the colleague, talk to your manager and let them deal with it.

one day you could be the colleague and wished somebody had pointed something out to you.

t0rt0ise

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

We used to put the names of clients for whom we had letters waiting on a whiteboard, until an out of hours visitor commented on one name and asked after them, saying it was their cousin. That was a breach of confidentiality on the visitor's part, they should have known we couldn't give any information.

Blame the visitor.. haha.. love it!

Savvy_Sue

t0rt0ise wrote: »

Blame the visitor.. haha.. love it!

:rotfl: sorry, I didn't phrase that very well, did I?

We did change the way we dealt with letters after that, BUT it was still unprofessional of that person to ask, and they should have known better. IMO.

DH and I work for separate charities, but we have some clients who use both sets of services. If I become aware that one of our clients is using 'his' services', it's not appropriate for me to ask "how's Fred", or vice versa. If 'Fred' wants either service to know that they're using the other, that's up to 'Fred'.

And where I work we have one client whose family lives very near me, who are 'well-known' to say the least. It's not appropriate for me to mention to DH that one of 'the family' is our client, and it's not appropriate for me to let this client know that I 'know' their family (and have been affected by their actions).

PurplePow

I used to work in HR at a large NHS trust. There were lots of problems regarding social networking sites...

A policy was issued based on this advising everyone to simply not mention work at all to avoid any problems.

surreysaver

ska_lover wrote: »

You have three choices:-
1) Grass them up to management - see how many friends this gets you at work
2) Have a quiet word with the person in question. As above there are repercussions to this.
3) Do nothing - pretend that you weren't petty enough to be poring over, and zooming in on someone elses photos.

The trouble with 2) is, if it gets found out you have contacted this person about it and not told management about it, you could be struck off for failing to protect patient confidentiality. Should staff really be takig pictures using their own cameras in the vicinity of patients and patient information?

You either need to report it officially or turn a blind eye. Dealing with it unofficially is dangerous for yourself. Obviously, the original photo on the employee's camera will have far better resolution, so the information on it will be zoomable. So that needs to be deleted. Even the police could get involved.

When will people learn - DO NOT MIX FACEBOOK AND WORK!

How do you know that patients or friends of patients on the ward are not Facebook friends of your co-worker? Its a small world....

surreysaver

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

BUT it was still unprofessional of that person to ask, and they should have known better. IMO.

Why? If the information is publicly available, why should they not ask about it?