I’ve reported my friend for an NHS confidentiality breech

Massive breach. It's a sackable offence to access even our own files

Don’t feel guilty if this is something she has been doing she will have at some point been caught as random audit checks are done

if someone is not on your list of those you are working with you have to give a reason why you are accessing their files with a reminder of only access files that you are authorised to

no one who works for the NHS and can access patient files is not aware and not regularly reminded of the consequences of access files you have no business to

As an aside, If I were Karen’s union rep I’d immediately demand a break in proceedings once I realised the above, and then hand over the letter if resignation I’d have insisted she write. Then she can honestly say ‘no’ when asked if she had ever been dismissed from a role for misconduct

Reference requests still ask if the applicant has been the subject of any disciplinary proceedings so her boss has a right to put that down as its factual information. It may still affect her ability to get another job and rightly so.

In the Trust I worked for, anyone with access to the system could view any appointments for a patient within the local NHS area. Sometimes you do need this for legitimate reasons, ie to either avoid appointment clashes, or conversely to schedule appointments on the same day if the patient had a long way to travel, had mobility issues etc.

oh don’t feel bad OP. Your friend is in the wrong and actually she should lose her job. I work for the nhs and it’s a privilege for us to have access to people’s very confidential information.
it is literally one of the first things you learn.
She has harmed you with what she has done. Do not downplay this.

i hope you are ok. Tell your other friends what if she had seen that they had an STI or their partner is having an affair and she shared that info? How would they feel then?

The equivalent of this is - if she was working in a bank and looked up and shared your friends’ financial details or their families’ financial information. Would they be happy knowing she had done that?

The people who use Pedants’ Corner aren’t the people who need their spelling and grammar correcting, though. On the internet we are seeing the wrong spellings of some words (eg your when it should be you’re) as much or even more often than the correct ones. It won’t be only the OP who sees the correction on a post and can learn something.

Bollocks is it. Find new friends.

You aren't responsible for her bad behaviour and she would have been trained to know better.

Those dick head friends are only acting like this because its your pregnancy and they think babies and gossip are exciting. they'd be raging if it was their cancer or their own child's illness.

Fuck the lot of them and don't doubt yourself. And when you do, ask yourself this: would you do it? Why not?

Internal audits can and do take time to follow. If your 'friend' has made a habit of searching other peoples files unnecessarily the auditors will find out and will follow up on every single case.
By all means contact the governance department and ask how the investigation is going, in your position I would do exactly that. Your friend can expect to lose her job over this, it is gross misconduct after all.

Congratulations on your pregnancy and I hope everything goes well for you, your OH and the baby.

Why have you chosen to call her Karen?

If you are using that as a misogynistic slur you are very very unreasonable and I really can't feel any sympathy for you.

Agree mostly.

In my Trust it would take about three months.

The fact she has looked up other friends details will mean it’s unlikely she will get a written warning. More likely dismissal. She has possibly looked up colleagues info too…

Head high. She’s totally out of order. We all know the penalty for this behaviour so she’s without excuse.

She may, and she SHOULD lose her job. Confidentiality is the cornerstone of the NHS, and this is told you repeatedly when you work there. She has absolutely zero excuse. You did nothing wrong, and may have protected others from more serious confidentiality breaches.

I'm wondering how OP would know the answer to this, given what she's posted. Only her ex-friend knows the answers. I expect she is just a nosy cow.

It's common everywhere.

You did the right thing.

I'd be getting back on to them too to chase it up!

I think you need some new friends to be honest! The fact she accessed stuff and openly spoke about it like it didn’t matter or that she had some kind of weird entitlement to ‘know what’s going on’ shows she really shouldn’t be in a job where you deal with personal information. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this. It must have been upsetting to find your friend had done this and more upsetting when your other friends also don't seem to see this significance of what she has done. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Karen’s behaviour is absolutely unforgivable, and utterly unprofessional, and she knows this. You did the right thing reporting her, it’s her fault this happened, not yours.

Best wishes for your pregnancy.

Consider another scenario - imagine if a woman with a abusive ex needed information kept confidential as it should be ( eg her address ) and it was leaked because confidentiality was not maintained that could have serious consequence's.

Your mutual friends are a bit bonkers here ... It's bad enough that she had been accessing records, but then to spread private information is beyond contempt. Yours is happy news, pregnancy, but medical records hold all manner of news ...
She lost her job by her own misconduct - you did not cause this.

It will be clear on the system when she accessed your records and as i assume she didn't work in maternity, it will be clear she accessed them in appropriately.
She will probably be fired. For what it's worth you did the right thing - if she has such a cavalier attitude to patients privacy she shouldn't be working in the NHS, and why was she just randomly checking your notes? She must be doing it to people she knows all the time. She would've been caught eventually anyway (when she shouldn't resist looking at celebrity of victim of crime records for example).
The fact she thought it okay to share with your mutual 'friends' and that they are taking her side however, is baffling to me.

What she did is extremely unacceptable. And worse, she doesn’t even seem to realise what she did is wrong.

Do the other “friends” know that she’s looked them up too? What she’s been doing is so much worse than being reported for doing it. Your other “friends” sound shit.

Karen should have known better. She gets enough training around information governance working in the NHS. She obviously thinks the rules don’t apply to her. Karen can get lost and so can the rest of the ‘friendship’ group. They don’t sound like friends worth keeping.

This happened to me, my 'friend ' got sacked with no right to appeal. She's not my friend anymore but I know i did the right thing reporting as its absolutely unforgivable to use NHS details to pry on peoples personal lives.

You did 100% the right thing OP.

Ask the mutual "friends" if they're all happy for her to go through their medical records.