Prepare an interprofessional staff update on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care
Background/Context: Healthcare providers today must develop their skills in mitigating risks to their patients and themselves related to patient information. At the same time, they need to be able to distinguish between effective and ineffective uses of social media in health care. This assessment will require you to develop a staff update for an interprofessional team to encourage team members to protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of patient information.
For this assessment, you will prepare a two-page interprofessional staff update on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care. Note the setting below that will become the focus of your interprofessional staff update.Hospital Setting: Hospitals are complex environments with various departments catering to different medical needs. From emergency rooms to surgical units, patient information flows continuously. With numerous professionals involved in patientcare, the risk of information leakage is high. Social Media Concern: Discussing challenging cases, sharing experiences, oreven posting about daily routines can inadvertently reveal patient information, especially if specifics are mentioned.
Search the Internet for infographics about protecting PHI. These infographics should serve as examples of how to succinctly summarize evidence-based information about protecting the security, privacy, and confidentiality of patient data.
Analyze these infographics and distill them into five or six principles of what makes them effective. As you design your interprofessional staff update, apply these principles. Note: In a staff update, you will not have all the images and graphics that an infographic might contain. Instead, focus your analysis on what makes the messaging effective.
- The focus of your interprofessional staff update: What not to do: social media.
This assessment is not a traditional essay. It is a staff educational update about PHI. Staff are frequently overwhelmed with required trainings and often click through without learning. To catch the attention of your audience be creative. Create a social media post that delivers the information required in an easy-to-read fashion like an infographic, or a short (under 3 minute) narrated presentation or video where you use your creativity to make the staff update fun and engaging.
The task force has asked team members assigned to the topics to include the following content in their updates in addition to content on their selected topics:
- What is protected health information (PHI)?
- Be sure to include essential HIPAA information.
- What are privacy, security, and confidentiality?
- Describe and provide examples of privacy, security, and confidentiality concerns related to the use of technology in health care.
- Explain the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to safeguard sensitive electronic health information.
- What evidence relating to social media usage and PHI do interprofessional team members need to be aware of? For example:
- What are some examples of nurses being terminated for inappropriate social media use in the United States?
- What types of sanctions have health care organizations imposed on interdisciplinary team members who have violated social media policies?
- What have been the financial penalties assessed against health care organizations for inappropriate social media use?
- What evidence-based strategies have health care organizations employed to prevent or reduce confidentiality, privacy, and security breaches, particularly related to social media usage?
Notes
- Be selective about the content you choose to include. Include need-to-know information. Omit nice-to-know information.
- Many times, people do not read staff updates, do not read them carefully, or do not read them to the end. Ensure your staff update piques staff members’ interest, highlights key points, and is easy to read/view. Avoid overcrowding the update with too much content.
- Also, supply a separate reference page that includes two or three peer-reviewed and one or two non-peer-reviewed resources (for a total of 3–5 resources) to support the staff update content.
