HIPAA and Appropriate Social Media Use in Healthcare

In this assessment, assume you are a nurse in an acute care, community, school, nursing home, or other health care setting. Before your shift begins, you scroll through Facebook and notice that a coworker has posted a photo of herself and a patient on Facebook. The post states, "I am so happy Jane is feeling better. She is just the best patient I've ever had, and I am excited that she is on the road to recovery."

You have recently completed your annual continuing education requirements at work and realize this is a breach of your organization's social media policy. Your organization requires employees to immediately report such breaches to the privacy officer to ensure the post is removed immediately and that the nurse responsible receives appropriate corrective action.

You follow appropriate organizational protocols and report the breach to the privacy officer. The privacy officer takes swift action to remove the post. Due to the severity of the breach, the organization terminates the nurse.

Based on this incident's severity, your organization has established a task force with two main goals:

Educate staff on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.

Prevent confidentiality, security, and privacy breaches.

The task force has been charged with creating a series of interprofessional staff updates on the following topics:

Social media best practices.

What not to do: Social media.

Social media risks to patient information.

Steps to take if a breach occurs.

You are asked to select one of the topics, or a combination of several topics, and create the content for a staff update containing a maximum of two content pages. When distributed to interprofessional team members, the update will consist of one double-sided page.

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 topic(s):

What is protected health information (PHI)?

Be sure to include essential HIPAA information.

What are privacy, security, and confidentiality?

Define and provide examples of privacy, security, and confidentiality concerns related to the use of the 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:

How many nurses have been terminated for inappropriate social media usage 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 usage?

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

Your staff update is limited to two double-spaced content pages. Be selective about the content you choose to include in your update so that you are able to meet the page length requirement. Include need-to-know information. Leave out 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. Avoid overcrowding the update with too much content.

Also supply a separate reference page that includes 2–3 peer-reviewed and 1–2 non-peer-reviewed resources (for a total of 3–5 resources) to support the staff update content.

Additional Requirements

Written communication: Ensure the staff update is free from errors that detract from the overall message.

Submission length: Maximum of two double-spaced content pages.

Font and font size: Use Times New Roman, 12-point.

Citations and references: Provide a separate reference page that includes 2–3 current, peer-reviewed and 1–2 current, non-peer-reviewed in-text citations and references (total of 3–5 resources) that support the staff update's content. Current no older than 5 years.