In medicine, maintaining the confidentiality of patients is not only an ethical requirement, violating its principles can attract serious legal proceedings with far reaching consequences. It is imperative that healthcare personnel are trained on confidentiality to avoid such cases as that of the UCLA Hospital Staff. This write-up presents a training idea.
Confidentiality Training Program
As a manager in the aforementioned healthcare institution, I would put in place a training program that meant to enlighten the healthcare staff about the ethical and legal facets of confidentiality and necessity to uphold the confidentiality of clients (Nursing Midwifery Council, 2012). The training program would focus on creating awareness on the specific confidentiality and privacy issues. Healthcare personnel should know that confidentiality is enshrined in the law, and that violation of confidentiality rules could occasion serious legal and ethical consequences (O’Dowd, 2013). The training program would aim at training the healthcare personnel on how to ensure that all patient medical information should only be used for the intended medical purposes. At the end of the training, the medical staffers should have an understanding of the need to keep off confidential patient data without their (patients’) permission.
Effectiveness of the Confidentiality Training Program
If the training on confidentiality is undertaken appropriately it will go a long way in ensuring that nurses uphold patient confidentiality and privacy (O’Dowd, 2013). Doing so would prevent incidences such as happened at the UCLA Medical Center. To achieve this, the training can be done through staff meetings, conferences and provision of online and offline learning materials to ensure that all healthcare staffers get the training. All members of staff would be required to take part in the training. All in all, the training program on confidentiality would be expected to eliminate cases related to patient privacy and confidentiality, which is important in winning the confidence and rust of our clients.
References
O’Dowd, A. (2013). HCAs and Patient Confidentiality. Nursing Times. Retrieved 2 December,
2013 from http://www.nursingtimes.net/whats-new-in-nursing/unison/hcas-and-patient-confidentiality/5000408.article
Nursing Midwifery Council. (2012). Confidentiality. Retrieved 2 December, 2013 from
http://www.nmc-uk.org/Nurses-and-midwives/Regulation-in-practice/Regulation-in-Practice-Topics/Confidentiality/
