• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Confidentiality in patient care

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

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

All members of the work force at a hospital contribute to the quality of care. But that doesn't mean everyone needs to see health information about patients. And it doesn't mean that everyone caring for patients should see information about all patients.

Many employees have no access to patient information, either in the computer or on paper. That's because they don't need to know the information. That's an important phrase to remember: Need to know. If you do not need to know confidential patient information to do your job, you will not be given access to it. That means that you should not look at medical records, either in the computer or on paper.

But there will still be occasions when you will have incidental access to confidential information:

• If a patient is placed in an isolation room, you may learn about why he or she is there, or you may suspect you know why. This is confidential information about a patient, and you should not share it with anyone else.
• The information about a patient's condition that you see written on whiteboards around the hospital is another example of incidental access.

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the online course "Nursing CE Series: Nursing Documentation - Reduce Your Risk of Liability." For more information on this and other courses, visit www.hcprofessor.com.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

• Comment
• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive

Comments