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 or more of the 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 topics:
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 use in the United States?
What types of sanctions have health care organizations imposed on interdisciplinary team members who have
violated social media policies?