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Strictly Confidential: Steps for maintaining patient privacy

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, January 17, 2008

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No matter where you work in healthcare, whether it's in the hospital, lab, radiology center, nursing home, doctors' office, or right in a patient's home, it's important to understand and respect privacy and confidentiality. Your organization can use many tools to protect confidentiality, including the following:

• Keeping records locked, allowing access only to people with a need to see information about patients
• Requiring employees and others who use computerized patient records to log off their computers while they are not at their workstations
• Turning computer screens away from the view of the public or people passing by
• Keeping posted or written patient information maintained in work areas (such as nurses' stations) covered from public view
• Holding discussions about patient care in private to reduce the likelihood that those who do not need to know will overhear
• Keeping electronic records secure through passwords and other technology
• Monitoring who gains access to records to ensure that they are being used appropriately
• Shredding disposed paper records or placing them in closed receptacles for delivery to a company that destroys records for the facility

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the online course "HIPAA Series: Privacy & Security for the Nursing/Clinical Staff." For more information on this and other courses, visit www.hcprofessor.com.

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