To be pissed off with local A&E

[PDFer]

DS broke his arm last night. Treatment was fine, in and out in a few hours.

Waiting area has been reconfigured for covid and staff had two nurses triaging with laptops on wheels.

These laptops were not locked at all, the nurses were pushing them around and then just leaving them to walk off and do something else. I could see all the patients details in a list and their “presenting complaint”. I spoke to the receptionist and told her that I didn’t really think it was protecting patients confidence. A nurse wandered over and locked it ten mins later. But then another nurse wheeled it off, booked someone in and wheels it back and just leaves it facing the waiting room completely unlocked.

Two of the patients were waiting for mental health crisis teams (there were only 11 patients when we were there). The screen was easily readable from the seats in the waiting room

Surely this must break some rules?

Where I work (financial industry, not in the UK), not locking laptop while away from it is a fireable offense, and people have been fired for doing things that breach client confidentiality.

Sounds like these nurses have not had much training on patient confidentiality, or just don't take it seriously.

Yes it definitely breaks rules and I'd put a complaint in through PALS if I was you. All NHS staff have training on confidentiality and data management. Locking the keyboard is 101 stuff. It needs ru be raised and dealt with.

Yes, raise it with PALS.

Staff should be removing their swipe cards when not at laptops or PCs so details cannot be accessed.

Around our place, the Laptops would have gone for a nice walk out of A and E with someone most likely.

I’m not normally a person who recommends complaining to the NHS as it’s funded by taxation and investigating complaints takes away taxpayer money from other aspects of the NHS for which it is intended. I have very mixed feelings on these things. However, this is a case where even I definitely would complain. Especially as you are not doing it for compensation. Whoever is in charge needs you be made aware of this and something needs to be put in place to stop it happening again.

If you have the energy to spend time on it, I’d look up the complaints procedure and follow it. It’s not acceptable for them to do that, they way they’ve done it so casually indicates that it’s normal to them to make such a huge breach in confidentiality and data protection.

Do they think that all that clapping means they can do whatever they want and be immune to consequences or something!?

Yes, please complain. It’s very wrong.

Maybe find out who is the lead nurse for the department and contact them directly to raise a concern? I fully agree that it’s a breach of patient confidentiality but surely PALs are there to be used when you have already tried to resolve an issue?

Making formal complaints causes a massive amount of work. I’m fairly sure the manager would sort this out quickly without the need for disciplinary action (which may or may not be justified). The staff may not have been adequately trained and could end up in a lot of trouble quite unfairly.

The staff may not have been adequately trained and could end up in a lot of trouble quite unfairly

Absolutely no way NHS staff can say they are not aware/have not been trained on this. And the fact is you have raised it directly as you said something at the time and it continued. I would 100% complain. The patients needing mental health crisis team may have nobody to advocate for them.

Not leaving computers unlocked was security 101 in about 2006 when I started work. We had an informal tradition that anyone who left their computer unlocked would 'send' an invite to a large group of people for drinks/cakes... which made the point pretty effectively!

@How2Help

The staff may not have been adequately trained and could end up in a lot of trouble quite unfairly

Absolutely no way NHS staff can say they are not aware/have not been trained on this. And the fact is you have raised it directly as you said something at the time and it continued. I would 100% complain. The patients needing mental health crisis team may have nobody to advocate for them.

Absolutely

@PDFer

DS broke his arm last night. Treatment was fine, in and out in a few hours.

Waiting area has been reconfigured for covid and staff had two nurses triaging with laptops on wheels.

These laptops were not locked at all, the nurses were pushing them around and then just leaving them to walk off and do something else. I could see all the patients details in a list and their “presenting complaint”. I spoke to the receptionist and told her that I didn’t really think it was protecting patients confidence. A nurse wandered over and locked it ten mins later. But then another nurse wheeled it off, booked someone in and wheels it back and just leaves it facing the waiting room completely unlocked.

Two of the patients were waiting for mental health crisis teams (there were only 11 patients when we were there). The screen was easily readable from the seats in the waiting room

Surely this must break some rules?

Jesus. You need to make this known.

To be able to read 11pt font on a 15 inch screen from a distance of 2m+, your remarkable eyesight needs to be researched and studied at length.

@MitziK there's always one, isn't there

@MatildaTheCat unless those nurses have only started working in the NHS in the last couple of weeks so no placements, no previous roles in the UK, there is not a chance that they wouldn't have had training on confidentiality and data management. And PALS is the correct route.

Absolutely complain, there is no excuse in the first instance, and after you'd pointed it out.
I'd put the names of some of the people whose data was visible into the complaint if you remember them.

yanbu that thats unacceptable but did you really need to keep reading once you realised they were patient names?!

No that’s not right. Yanbu.

Information Governance / Data Protection refresher training is annual in my (NHS) experience. Any breaches of process should be reported using the risk management system so appropriate training and/or discipline can be handed out as the situation calls for.

This definitely needs to be reported and dealt with. I can't think of any other way to stop it happening again.

Yes it breaks the rules. But my experience of hospitals is that everyone knows everyone else's business due to curtain cubicles etc and very private conversations taking place on wards with patients full names hanging above their beds.

Report it to the Information Governance department for the relevant NHS Trust - they should log it as an incident, have it investigated and ensure everyone in A&E redoes their Data Security & Awareness Training. If COVID wasn’t so prevalent, A&E would probably get a surprise audit from the IG team too.