Imagine a situation where a person visits his or her regular medical staff for serious reproduction issues. The medical team then advised the patient that for a proper diagnosis, he or she needs to take some sample images for further analysis. The patient trusts the staff and allows the process to take place. After a single day, the same patient finds the same picture on a social media platform with details of the patient as an advert or a program promotion. Imagine the feeling or the reaction from the patient. It would have been better if this was a fictions story. However, such a situation has been reported in the medical setting. Healthcare sector is one area which usually adopts the use of technology to improve care for the patients. An excellent example, in this case, is the Electronic Medical Record that is useful in the hospital setting for storing data and also easily retrieving them. The 21 st century is landmarked by extensive use of a smartphone. The garget is used to access the internet, with preference being Facebook. The smartphone as a garget has come with both good and bad sides. An example of a sector which is experiencing both the positive and negative sides of smartphone use is healthcare. As much as it is critical for healthcare services delivery, there are legal and ethical issues which cloud the use of smartphone in the healthcare industry. In this paper, the focus is on HIPAA and the strategies it uses to regulate the use of smartphones in a medical setting. Part of the discussion is also on the positive and negative Issus related to the use of smartphone in a hospital setting. Lastly, the discussion will focus on some a scenario where there is an issue of the smartphone in the healthcare setting.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a body that has the mandate to make laws and regulations that guide the medical staffs as they use smartphones in a healthcare setting. According to ( Nettrour et al. (2018), privacy is the center of the HIPAA. The patients trust medical doctors or nurses to the extent that they are willing to share the painful secret of his or her health with such a person. In this sense, the outcome of the interaction depends on the degree to which the physician will keep such information confidential to retain the trust. From ( Nettrour et al., 2018), viewpoint, trust between the physician and the patient is a pertinent factor that translate to quality care in the hospital.
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It is with such a concern that the HIPAA has regulations that govern the smartphone use in the hospital. HIPAA stipulates that a physician must understand a HIPAA violation when using a smartphone or the Patients data. For instance, they should not post a verbal gossip about a patient or unauthorized individual on the internet (Freundlich et al., 2018) . Further, HIPAA further puts a restriction on sharing photos or images. The staffs should not take and share the photos s patient without consent. They need to work safely with protected health information (PHI). The physician must obtain permission from the patient in case there I need to use any of such information. Similarly, it is illegal for such a doctor or a nurse to “share seemingly innocent comments or pictures, such as a workplace lunch which happens to have visible patient files underneath” (Freundlich et al., 2018). It is also the responsibility of the healthcare organization to ensure that there is proper training of the staffs on matters of privacy, and the use of smartphone within the care setting. It is also a requirement from HIPAA that patient’s confidentiality and privacy matters involving the smartphone use in hospital is reported to the officers so that an action is taken to curb any danger that may come as a result of such activity.
The legal and ethical fields, besides the HIPAA, also cautions the healthcare staffs from using a smartphone to jeopardize the privacy of the patients. The American Medical Association (AMA) principles of medical ethics have a list of regulations that are meant to guide the healthcare staffs while handling the patient’s records. The staffs should adhere to such rules to reduce the cases of medical, legal issues and ethical issues which may potentially arise upon the misuse of such data. The AMA echoes on the patients confidentially and stipulates that staffs should not share or use these data without proper consent from the patient. AMA is also concerned with fraud and patient privacy matters. AMA thus has many regulations that govern the staffs as they use data so that they do not interfere with patient privacy. The AMA has a provision on how medical practitioners consent the patients before the use of their data. The consent should include the patients' knowledge on why the hospital their data on a social media campaign, or telemedicine forum ( Nettrour et al., 2018).
The case study
The case involves photos stolen with no consent from the patient. The nurse acted in contrary to the laws that both AMA and the HIPAA stipulate ( Nettrour et al., 2018). It is thus illegal for the nurse to sell these photos despite the price the person may get in exchange. The nurse, therefore, should decline any offer from anybody that would wish to enrich themselves by using these photos. The right action to take in this case is to delete these photos. In this manner, the nurse will be sure that the images may not be used illegally and in unethical miner by any of their friends. However, this will also depend on the progress of the situation. Deleting these photos is essential whether a friend already has them within their reach or they have not been shared. In case a friend has these photos and is ready to exchange them for money to a magazine company, the best action for the nurse is to report the incident, and give detail so that there can be measures to stop the magazine company from publishing any of this information.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Smartphone use in healthcare increases the interaction between the patient and the medical practitioners. Telemedicine creates a situation where follow-up is easy. It thus improves the quality of services. Other than that, it enhances the ease of healthcare education in the medical field ( Nettrour et al., 2018). Health staffs can target and reach many people with the use of a smartphone. Through social media platform, camping can reach many people in the society and tune their campaign or education services to such a target audience. In this case, it reduces the cost of health promotion. However, there are numerous downsides of smartphones. It is prone to abuse, and in this case, they can be used to infringe patient privacy and confidentiality in the hospital setting. (Freundlich et al. (2018) assert that smartphones are distractive, and they may divert attention from the core issue in the hospital
In conclusion, the use of a smartphone in the healthcare industry has both positive and negative effects. The negative side is where the phone is used to publish or post the patient's data on social media platforms by medical staff. Though there is regulation from both AMA and HIPAA, there are reports about these are incidents before. From the discussion, the case given is still an indication that most physicians are still not aware of the proper ways to use a smartphone in medical care. The advantage of the smartphone in this area is its efficiency and effectiveness in aiding quality care delivery.
References
Chan, T., Trueger, N. S., Roland, D., &Thoma, B. (2018). Evidence-based medicine in the era of social media: scholarly engagement through participation and online interaction. Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine , 20 (1), 3-8.
Freundlich, R. E., Freundlich, K. L., &Drolet, B. C. (2018). Pagers, Smartphones, and HIPAA: Finding the Best Solution for Electronic Communication of Protected Health Information. Journal of medical systems , 42 (1), 9.
Nettrour, J. F., Burch, M. B., &Bal, B. S. (2018). Patients, pictures, and privacy: managing clinical photographs in the smartphone era. Arthroplasty Today .
