Patient confidentiality breach - dilemma

surreysaver

MonkeySaving? wrote: »

No brownie points from colleagues, but have some brownie points from (some) people on this thread who understand the ramifications for not reporting it. Well done for doing the right thing

On the contrary, millie may earn brownie points from her colleagues, as they will be brought into disrepute by the employee's actions.

surreysaver

milliemonster wrote: »

To those of you who have expressed dismay at why we seem to be bothered with such trivialities, well unfortunately this comes from litigation in the past with regard to breaches so the NHS take this very seriously now, to some of you, you wouldn't care less if the whole world and his dog saw your name on a photo posted on facebook, others would be very upset about this, everyone's different.

Also, with the amount of money being spent on and the public's concern over electronic patient records, everything must be done to maintain the integrity of that information - if anyone in the NHS is seen to disrespect patient information, it costs a lot of public trust, confidence and money.

Savvy_Sue

surreysaver wrote: »

But why were they able to see the board if it wasn't publicly visible - and you shouldn't assume that others have, or have been trained on, such policies.

What I meant was that that area of our building is not a 'public' place. Certainly not in the same way that a hospital ward is.

We have since changed the way we do things. However if other professionals in similar fields to our work who happen to be visiting our building have NOT been trained in confidentiality policies it's rather alarming. Although as you say, we shouldn't assume. I once asked someone working with homeless people a 'confidentiality' question at interview and was shocked at the answer, which seemed to boil down to telling anyone who phoned up anything at all about a client!!!