Click here to request a complimentary copy of our current issue.
Confidentiality: Unauthorized Persons In Treatment Area.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
It is unwise for a healthcare employee to let the employee’s friends or family drop by and see the employee on the job.
Such visitors can see who the patients are and possibly pick up on sensitive information.There was no discrimination in firing the female MRI technician for a breach of patient confidentiality for allowing her child and niece to see that a classmate was having a procedure at the hospital and for allowing them to view the computer screens in the control room during her procedure.
The technician’s male supervisor had allowed a pediatric patient’s young friends to be with him in the waiting area and had let them into the control room during his procedure. The difference was that that pediatric patient had expressly asked for his friends to be allowed to be with him and to be allowed to watch the monitors during his procedure.
The male supervisor’s conduct, which led to no disciplinary action, was proper and legal while the female technician’s con-duct, which led to her firing, was improper and an illegal act by the hospital.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT ALABAMA September 18, 2017An MRI technician was terminated after she let her daughter and her niece into the control room during a pediatric patient’s MRI after letting them see that the patient, a classmate of theirs, was waiting in the waiting area before having her procedure. The patient could see that her class-mates were there but she did not bring them with her or ask them to come. They came in on their own to see the one girl’s mother at work after school. The patient was never asked if she wanted them to be there or wanted them to be able to see the monitors. Later the patient’s mother lodged a formal complaint.
The grounds for the technician’s termination were that she violated the patient’s right to medical confidentiality. She allowed unnecessary and unauthorized persons to learn that she was having a procedure and allowed them to view data on the computer screens in the control room as her procedure went forward.
The US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama saw no gender discrimination by the hospital in firing the female technician while her male supervisor was not disciplined at all for what seemed superficially to be the same con-duct. The difference was that there was no patient consent for the presence of the un-authorized and unnecessary persons during the female technician’s patient’s case.
The MRI technician had completed and signed off on the hospital’s training module that stressed the utmost importance of patient confidentiality. Patient confidentiality means that medical and other personal information about patients is restricted to legitimate medical need. Restricting such information to legitimate medical need makes it very unwise to allow persons to come and visit a healthcare employee while the employee is on duty. The hospital’s training also stressed that any violation by a hospital employee could be grounds for disciplinary action or termination.
Greene v. Med. Ctr., 2017 WL 4127910 (N.D. Ala., September 18, 2017).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/medical-confidentiality-document-removal.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/medical-confidentiality-patient-assault.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/confidentiality-family-present.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/confidentiality-violated-rights.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/confidentiality-nurse-medical-chart.pdf