Information has become a critical component in the current healthcare system as it facilitates decision making and formulation of effective modes of care. However, its collection has posed varied risks especially if it is obtained by parties with malicious intent. Everyone, including nurses, has the role of ensuring that their respective organizations are secure from insider threats, hackers, and practices that may unintentionally lead to data compromise. Patient information should be held with utmost confidentiality meaning that secure data practices must be followed according to both organizational and regulatory requirements. In fact, outcomes of the best practices provisions are predicated on the ability of nurses to understand, implement, and behave in a manner that protects classified institutional data.
The purpose is to inform on the necessity of secure data practices, as well as propose secure data practices applicable in nursing environments. The importance of best practices is that they provide frameworks to keeping healthcare data at desirable security levels through continuous assessment of risks, formulation of mitigating factors, and application of strategies adaptive to changing security landscape (Dixon et al., 2014). Truthfully, security breaches are happening every day partly because organizations have weak information policies with profound implications on originations where intrusions occur. Hence, having this best practices document is essential for not only protecting patient information but also ensuring that health institutions do not experience low reputation and trust due to weak practices.
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"Nursing Informatics and Best Practices".
Another reason for creating an informatics best practices policy is to ensure that the organization does not experience negative consequences of poor information management. Having best practices means that confidential operational and patient information is adequately protected. Most of the time, it means that nurses are part of protecting organizational integrity, ethics, and trust, especially if it holds private data. Failure to have good informatics policies may result in legal liabilities, financial losses, and loss of institutional goodwill from the potential or existing clients.
Security practice definitions and practices form the foundation for encouraging safe and secure data use in nursing practice settings. The first secure practice is the allocation of security access mechanisms to individuals according to their respective levels of clearance. According to Morris, Kleist, Dull, & Tanner (2014), every person should have a security key such as passwords, to access, modify, or add information to existing databases. In case access codes are lost, it should be reported immediately so that necessary security measures are taken in case obtained by parties with malicious intent such as hackers.
The organization has the authority to monitor the usage of applications, data, and communication tools as they are used to perform daily duties. Monitoring critical information systems infrastructure is crucial for protecting confidential data since it continuously assesses threats and potential misuse of information access privileges. Authority to monitor allows identification of unusual data traffic, access to information, and breaches of defined practices alleviating the potential of compromising overall system security.
Another informatics security practice is creation of specific access controls in addition to the discussed element of access codes. In this part, every worker has an account with specific access limits constrained to their tasks and responsibilities. This is intended to limit exposure of sensitive data so that compromise of one user does not jeopardize the whole organizational information systems infrastructure.
Limiting access and usage of social media are among the best data security practices particular in relation to patient confidentiality. The policy is to have an institutional account that is monitored and assigned to centralized control so that every information disseminated is vetted before reaching public space. This is important for preventing vulnerabilities based on social engineering, spear phishing, and accidental posting of information by workers without proper authorization (Chretien & Kind, 2013).
Part of having best practices is instituting punitive measures when individuals breach patient confidentiality clauses. Whenever there is a breach, and it is tracked to certain individuals, they should undergo legal punishments or otherwise ensure adherence. As explained by Faden et al. (2013), protecting patient confidentiality is part of ethical requirements for the nursing profession. It is an ethical requirement to protect sensitive information, monitor information traffic to avoid breach, avoid violation of government privacy regulations, and adhere to non-disclosure agreements of confidential operating information.
On the other hand, government regulations have come into effect throughout the healthcare industry where institutions are required to plan for security, ensure appropriate officials are given security responsibilities, periodically review security controls, and implement techniques and procedures for verifying effectiveness of their security controls. In addition, there are federal information processing standards that seek to categorize information so that people are given access to information relevant to performing their roles; no more, no less. In case of a breach, institutions, and their administration risk prosecution, loss of professional accreditation, and fines depending on the severity of the information system breaches.
Therefore, nurse leaders are supposed to be good teachers, listeners, communicators, and inspirational to their followers even if some policies seem unfavorable, intrusive, or limiting. Through these behaviors, nurse leaders can demonstrate and guide the implementation of secure data policies by being role models, mediators, and solvers of operational problems derived from the application of particular policies. In addition to behaviors, policy adherence requires skill such as communication, ability to follow procedural requirements, restrain oneself from disseminating information without proper evaluation, and capacity to accommodate change through continuous improvement since information systems best practices evolve with institutional functional requirements, as well as federal regulations.
- Chretien, K. C., & Kind, T. (2013). Social media and clinical care ethical, professional, and social implications. Circulation , 1413-1421.
- Dixon, W. G., Spencer, K., Williams, H., Sanders, C., Lund, D., Whitley, E. A., & Kaye, J. (2014). A dynamic model of patient consent to sharing of medical record data. BMJ, 348.
- Faden, R. R., Kass, N. E., Goodman, S. N., Pronovost, P., Tunis, S., & Beauchamp, T. L. (2013). An ethics framework for a learning health care system: a departure from traditional research ethics and clinical ethics. Hastings Center Report, S16-S27.
- Morris, B. W., Kleist, V. F., Dull, R. B., & Tanner, C. D. (2014). Secure information market: A model to support information sharing, data fusion, privacy, and decisions. Journal of Information Systems, 269-285.
