Privacy of patients' information in hospital lifts: observational study

How Shall I Write to My Patient? Data Protection in Digital Communication

Digital communication is omnipresent. In everyday life, social messenger apps are very popular. Thus, for some patients1 it seems intuitive to use such media to correspond with their professional therapists as well. From a practical perspective, this seems to be advantageous for the therapists themselves. However, this should not lead us to overlook the problems of such platforms, especially issues with data protection. In spite of the legally binding rollout of a safe communication route for therapeutic and medical services in Germany (the so-called “Telematik-Infrastruktur”), so far, there is no unproblematic communication platform for therapists and their patients. Special messenger apps, which explicitly do not store metadata, seem to be the least problematic besides classic phone calls or letters. However, they are not yet widely used. This paper aims to sensitize psychotherapists for their responsibility and to demonstrate technical options, which need to be weighed carefully in order to maximize data protection of digital communication in therapeutic practice.

Wie schreib ich’s meinem Patienten? Datenschutzprobleme bei der digitalen Kommunikation

Digitale Kommunikation ist aus dem Alltag nicht mehr wegzudenken; im privaten Bereich sind insbesondere soziale Messenger-Dienste weit verbreitet. So scheint es für manche Patienten<A51_FootRef>1</A51_FootRef> nahliegend zu sein, solche Kommunikationsmittel auch für die Kommunikation mit ihren professionellen Behandlern zu verwenden. Aus organisatorischen Gründen scheint dies auch für Psychotherapeuten Vorteile mit sich zu bringen; dies darf jedoch nicht unreflektiert dazu führen, die enormen Probleme solcher Plattformen, insbesondere mit Blick auf den Datenschutz, aus den Augen zu verlieren. Trotz rechtlich verpflichtender Einführung der Telematik-Infrastruktur in der ambulanten vertragspsychotherapeutischen/vertragsärztlichen Versorgung existiert bisher keine unproblematische Kommunikationsplattform für Psychotherapeuten und ihre Patienten. Spezielle Messenger-Dienste, die Metadaten ausdrücklich nicht speichern, scheinen neben der klassischen Telefonverbindung oder einem Brief die wenigsten Nachteile zu haben, sie sind jedoch bisher kaum verbreitet. Dieser Artikel möchte Psychotherapeuten für ihre Verantwortung sensibilisieren, und es sollen darin technische Möglichkeiten dargestellt werden, die individuell sorgfältig abgewogen werden müssen, um gegebenenfalls den Datenschutz der digitalen Kommunikation in der Praxis zu verbessern.

Assessment of Doctors' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Confidentiality in Hospital Care

The physician's duty of confidentiality is based on the observance of the patient's privacy and intimacy and on the importance of respecting both of these rights, thus creating a relationship of confidence and collaboration between doctor and patient. The main objective of this work consists of analyzing the aspects that are related to the confidentiality of patients' data with respect to the training, conduct and opinions of doctors from different Clinical Management Units of a third-level hospital via a questionnaire. The present study aimed to define the problem and determine whether the opinions of these professionals correspond to those observed in a previous work conducted at the same center. Of the 200 questionnaires that were collected, 62.5% were from consultants and the rest were from residents (37.5%) with an average of 14.4 ± 12.5 years in professional practice. The respondents noted habitual situations in which confidentiality was breached in the reference hospital (74%). The section on their attitudes and behaviors towards situations related to confidentiality showed a slightly lower average score than that of their medical knowledge; significant differences in these scores were observed between the consultants and residents as well as between the extreme age groups (≤ 30 vs. ≥ 51 years) and years of professional practice, thus more inadequate attitudes were consistently noted in younger doctors who had fewer years of experience. Finally, the respondents answered that the training of doctors in the aspects of healthcare law and ethics was the most important measure that the hospital could adopt regarding confidentiality practices.

Do patients know that physicians should be confidential? study on patients' awareness of privacy and confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality are among the inalienable rights of every human being that contribute to preservation of a sense of reverence and dignity. The present study was conducted to examine patients' awareness of their entitlement to these important rights. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 patients in Tehran, Iran during the year 2010. Collected data included patients' demographics (age, gender, marital status, place of residence, and educational level), type of hospital ward, frequency of hospitalization, duration of hospital stay, and patients' awareness of privacy and confidentiality. Two trained interviewers gathered the data using a self-made questionnaire, which was specifically designed to assess patients' awareness of privacy and confidentiality. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were determined using content validity and Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha (a = 0.7), respectively. To analyze data, patients were assigned to three categories of poor (0 ≤ scores ≤ 3), moderate (4 ≤ scores ≤ 7) and good (8 ≤ scores ≤ 10) levels of awareness. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS software version 21. The results showed that 21% of the patients had poor, 72% moderate, and 7% good awareness of privacy and confidentiality, with a mean of 4.61 ± 1.63. In this study, 153 patients (76.5%) provided a correct definition of privacy, and 161 patients (80.5%) were aware of instances of privacy violation. In addition, a good level of awareness was found in 77 patients (38.5%) in terms of physician confidentiality, and in 158 patients (81.4%) regarding confidentiality of examination results and medical consultations. Our study results highlight the necessity to inform patients about the ethical and legal issues related to privacy and confidentiality, before or during admission.

[A guide to successful public relations for hospitals and emergency medical services]

Tragic accidents, e.g. involving celebrity patients or severe incidents in hospital occur suddenly without any advance warning, often produce substantial interest by the media and quickly overburden management personnel involved in both hospitals and emergency medical services. While doctors, hospitals and emergency medical services desire objective media reports, the media promote emotionalized and dramatized reports to ensure maximum attention and circulation. When briefing the media, the scales may quickly tilt from professional, well-deliberated information to unfortunate, often unintended disinformation. Such phenomena may result in continuing exaggerated reports in the tabloid press, which in the presence of aggressive lawyers and a competitive hospital environment can turn into image and legal problems. In this article, several aspects are discussed in order to achieve successful public relations.Interviews should be given only after consultation with the responsible press officer and the director of the respective department or hospital director. Requests for information by the media should always be answered as otherwise one-sided, unintentional publications can result that are extremely difficult to correct later. One should be available to be contacted easily by journalists, regular press conferences should be held and critics should be taken seriously and not be brushed off. Questions by journalists should be answered in a timely manner as journalists are continuously under time pressure and do not understand unnecessary delays. Information for the media should always be provided at the same time, no publication should be given preference and an absolutely current list of E-mail contacts is required. When facing big events a press conference is preferred as many questions can be answered at once. Always be well prepared for an interview or even for just a statement. Each interview should be regarded as an opportunity to put a story forward which you wanted to do for a long time and your message should not contain more than three main points.Each hospital or emergency medical service should have a professional department for public relations, an exact knowledge of the regional and national media and strategies how to handle an incident that is of interest for the media. The media should be provided with information not only when a negative incident has happened but should be provided with regular positive messages as well. An interview must be carefully prepared to achieve a good image.

A secure medical data exchange protocol based on cloud environment

In recent years, health care technologies already became matured such as electronic medical records that can be easily stored. However, how to get medical resources more convenient is currently concern issue. In spite of many literatures discussed about medical systems, but these literatures should face many security challenges. The most important issue is patients' privacy. Therefore, we propose a secure medical data exchange protocol based on cloud environment. In our scheme, we use mobile device's characteristics, allowing peoples use medical resources on the cloud environment to seek medical advice conveniently.

Alarm caused by sedation of older people report

A shocking report which claims that over 22 000 elderly people in nursing homes are being given powerful sedatives for no medical reason, has been criticized by the National Care Homes Association.