Discuss the questions listed after you have read the scenario. What do you think

Question

Discuss the questions listed after you have read the scenario. What do you think will happen to Sloan, and why does he think that medical records are not as important as other parts of the clinic? Talk about some of the mistakes you think could be made, and how to avoid them. Why is each part of the clinic, clinical, administrative, physicians and assistants important to the overall care of the clinic and the patient? How would you feel in this situation?

Jennifer has decided that Sloan is just not a good match for the practice. One week before Sloan's probationary period is up, Jennifer brings her into the office to talk. She reminds Sloan that she originally was hired to work in the administrative part of the office. She explains that, although Sloan's desire and enthusiasm for the clinical side were evident, Jennifer did not feel that Sloan was addressing her duties in a responsible way and that her work ethic needed improvement. Jennifer reminded Sloan of the patient's record she had accessed and explained that this was a breach of patient confidentiality and medical ethics.

Sloan was clearly affected by Jennifer's evaluation of her work. She opened up to Jennifer and expressed her remorse that she had waited so long after graduation to look for employment. She also said that she was beginning to feel desperate for a job and felt that she needed to take the administrative job in hopes of later getting the position she wanted. Sloan apologized for accessing the patient's record and said she understood that this breach alone was grounds for immediate termination.

Jennifer was impressed that Sloan was able to admit her mistakes and feel remorse for them. She agreed to allow Sloan to volunteer at the clinic in the back office two afternoons a week until she found permanent employment. Sloan was thankful that Jennifer was willing to help her reach her career goals. She said she would take the knowledge of her mistakes to heart and work very hard for Jennifer as a volunteer. Jennifer reiterated to Sloan that her breach of confidentiality would be a difficult issue to overcome in future employment.

Explanation / Answer

Sloan is just out of college and looking for a job so he is still not used to working in a corporate environment and he does not know the importance of the patient's data ina n hospital. It is a good thing that he agreed that he had accessed the information without the consent of the relevant person. Sloan will get a warning from the employer and he will be told what are the consequences of leaking the information and how it would affect both the patients and the reputation of the hospital. He will learn the importance of the data and why data privacy is important. This will help him in performing his work more responsibly. According to him the data is just some information available in the computer and going through it without the consent will not acuse any harm. But he needs to understand the seriousness of it.

Some of the mistakes would be:

Creating an awareness among all the employees of the hospital on the importance of data privacy is the only way to stop these mistakes from happening. The employees should also know the consequences of getting involved in such activities.

Every single person in the hospital is responsible for generating the data in some form and all the data is used to analyze the performance of the organization and also to see how the patients like the environment provided to them. This data can help the hospital in improving their performance and also identify the gaps in the system for improvement.

I would consider Sloan as a young graduate who has no knowledge about the data privacy and would warn him for doing this mistake. I would strictly tell not to get involved in activities like this and ask him to concentrate only on his responsibilities. I would still keep him in the job if the performance is good or remove him from the job if the agreement has expired or is going to expire soon. This does not need the involvement of the legal actions against him.

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