termination Archives - Brown Law Office

This past week, a Maryville, Tennessee, nurse was fired for allegedly posting racist and violent messages through her Facebook account.

It was later learned that she could not have made the comments because hospital security footage showed that she was in a patient’s room at the approximate time the comments were made.

Then it was learned that the horrible posts were composed by her fiancé on her social media account. He even went to the hospital to tell officials that it was he rather than the nurse who had written the posts. The fiancé claimed that he sent the messages because somebody sent the nurse a rude message first.

Nevertheless, the nurse was terminated from her position and referred to the Tennessee Board of Nursing for investigation.

The concern of the hospital was that comments made on a social media site by an employer reflected poorly on the organization and does not reflect the code of conduct and values for the hospital.

Now, the nurse is concerned not only about her ability to find another job but, due to the racial content of and backlash to the messages, for her personal safety as well as that of her own 2 children.

Since the incident, she and her fiancé have parted ways and she has sought protective orders against him. [Click here for article]

I can never stress enough how important it is to maintain your privacy and security by keeping your passwords private and share them with no one! If you share a computer at home, do not save your passwords as others might post on your behalf.

Your privacy is the one thing that is truly yours. Therefore, respect it and do not share passwords or allow people access to your computer, even your children. You never know what they might write on your wall and it could become a quite troublesome problem.

You are a professional and everything you do reflects on you. Unfortunately, this nurse paid the terrible price of losing her job and being reported to the Board.

As nurses we are caregivers and sometimes the personal relationships, we may find ourselves involved in are not the healthiest. We believe that the other person needs us so we continue the relationship.

Please, if you are in an unhealthy relationship, get the help you need to end it.

I often hear of nurses who made HIPAA violations, none of whom intended to breach privacy but either curiosity or carelessness got the best of them.

Here are ten such examples:

EMR – If you forget to log out of a computer terminal, someone else can follow you to access anything under you log in. Computers are smart and everything you do on the device can be tracked. Every keystroke you make, every chart you look at, everything! Even if you accidentally pull up a wrong patient’s chart, that is a HIPAA violation. Should this occur, immediately notify your supervisor.
HANDWRITTEN NOTES – When I was practicing, I had a clipboard with all my patients’ names and what I was to do with each one. Many times, I forgot to throw away my sheets and brought them home where I discarded them in the trash. If these notes are thrown away rather than placed in a secure shred bin, you are violating patient privacy and HIPAA.
PROTECTED INFORMATION – If you have a coworker who has had a procedure and you want to find out how they are, you CANNOT access their records. In that position, you are just like everyone else who is not allowed access to this person’s information. If you want any information on the coworker, you will have to go through the normal way of finding out, just like any family member or friend.
PATIENT FAMILY AND FRIENDS – Be cautious about any information you give to a patient’s family member or well-meaning friend. Make sure the patient has signed a HIPAA release or authorization giving you permission to share information with that particular person.
SHARING INFORMATION – Be careful not to share information outside protected channels. If you text a doctor from your personal cell phone, you have violated HIPAA. Any such text or email must be secured through approved software and channels.
SELFIES – As much as you would love to be friends with your patients, anything you share on your Facebook page or other social media, such as a selfie with the patient, is a HIPAA violation. Frankly you should never take a picture with a patient, but a patient may take a picture with you. I would not even be friends on Facebook with a patient because that too is a HIPAA violation of boundaries. However, if the patient takes the selfie and they post it on their own social media, no violation has occurred. The violation occurs it YOU post it.
REPORTING HIPAA VIOLATIONS – You can self-report any HIPAA violation but that does not necessarily mean you will not get in trouble but to NOT self-report can make the situation worse. However, if you note another’s HIPAA violation and fail to report it, you can make the situation worse as you can be considered an accomplice in the violation.
PUNITIVE MEASURES – HIPAA violations can result in a variety of legal responses that go beyond just being terminated from your job. A UCLA surgeon was sentenced to 4 months in jail and fined $2,000 after he illegally accessed medical records over 300 times of his supervisor, coworkers and celebrities.
ELEVATOR CHATS – In one case, a nurse was trying to reach a physician about a patient but he had not called back when she ran into him in an elevator. She promptly began a discussion with the doctor to get an order. This is a violation of HIPAA because the disclosure of the patient’s situation was not in a secure place
FAXING – If you are extremely busy and need to fax medical information, take the few seconds to confirm it is going to the proper recipient. If you accidentally send medical information to the wrong place, you have violated HIPAA.

A HIPAA violation is an extremely serious offense and can result in huge fines and even imprisonment, as noted in No. 8 above.

In ABC’s reality show, NY MED, they inadvertently filmed two hospital patients without consent. The hospital paid a settlement of $2,200,000 and was instructed to implement a corrective action plan.

HIPAA violations are extreme and saying “it was an accident” is not an acceptable excuse. There is zero tolerance for such and 100% compliance of HIPAA regulations is required at all times.

Please careful to protect your patient’s confidentiality.

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