If you work in the nhs would you get in trouble for this?

[Bewilderedbotheredbemused]

Looking at a patient who isn’t your patient’s notes.

so say a nurse on ward a looked a patient x’s (someone the nurse knew) notes who was on ward b. If the nurse was found out, would they get into trouble?

would they be able to tell if a nurse / doc had done something like this after the fact?

(for clarity I have not done something like this, someone I know is making some allegations about another person I also know)

I used to look at medical records as part of my job and if I ever needed to look at records for someone I even vaguely knew, I used to go to my manager, explain the reason I knew them and check that she was happy for me to access the records. Every time. It made no difference that I couldn't do my job without it and that I was one of only 3 people who did my job. I still checked first.

Would everyone get those emails? This was allegedly done years ago but the healthcare worker has been promoted since

Absolutely very rare! We’d not long had a report in our local paper about someone doing the exact same thing and they’d need sacked! She should have been sacked and I can’t understand why she wasn’t as she was already known to the governance manager for doing this when I spoke to him! If I’d done that in my job my backside would have been out of the door!

I don't think so. I used to sometimes misskey a hospital number so ended up in the front screen of the wrong patient's records. I never got a query as to why I was looking at a record for a patient who had never been through our department.

Not even the next of kin?

I recently had to phone the hospital to find what ward my DH had been put on. They told me no problem. How else could I have visited him/brought him his clothes etc?

I don’t know, I just know I did. I worked in a mental health crisis team and we would get called for info from other providers, often out of area, on patients who had turned up in crisis, so I would check if any local teams were involved, check diagnosis/ meds/ risk issues to share relevant info. Then I would know to expect a request for my reasons for looking at those notes.

What about allegations of stealing paracetamol ? Is that serious?

Yes but it sounds like it wasn’t picked up at the time (or there would have been an investigation) so likely to be impossible to do anything about now.

Yes, I’m a nurse and we have no business looking at any patients notes that we’re not directly caring for and stuff like that does get audited

Not allowed to even look at your own notes.

Even in the circumstances you describe (if I have understood correctly) the
person should have asked the IG dept or their senior manager if they could access the record and would probably have been told no. Did the person do this?

It’s almost irrelevant now that it has come to light because the family concerned are raising a complaint. The person accessed a record without the appropriate permission. Their Employer’s policy (rather than Mumsnet) will be a better guide as to how this will be dealt with. They may wish to disclose it to their manager rather than wait for a formal complaint.

different hospitals have different systems - for example Lorenzo or Rio.
on the system I use currently when I am on the main notes I can see the names of the recent staff who have accessed the record. Useful if I (for example) need to know that a colleague has taken the care back over. If I search a new patient the system asks me to give the reason why (I work in urgent care with a high number of referrals). Some Trusts do regular or random audits and the system sends an alert if you search your own surname.

it is very very easy for IT to audit and it is obvious if someone has typed in a digit wrong and immediately exited the incorrect record. They can tell how long the record was accessed and which sections. if they find evidence of one record accessed without permission they usually do wider checks in case the person has nosed on other records.

Governance Director in NHS here. Accessing patient data that is not required as part of your role is a sackable offence and referral to their governing body would also take place e.g. NMC or GMC etc. The same goes for taking any drugs that belong to the organisation. An investigation would have to take place to prove this happened i.e. there is sufficient evidence. It cant just go on an allegation with no proof.

Long gone are the days of the ‘notes trolley’ on the ward. 40 odd years ago they used to make for interesting reading on a quiet night shift. There was no laws in place back then to protect privacy. Can’t remember a thing about any of them now, so they can’t have been that good, oh just remembered we did have a murderer once, with a police escort!

Yes, you'd be struck off.

Wasn't there a case a few years back where a lot of staff were sacked after accessing a Premier league football players notes when he was on a ward? Deservedly so.

Must have been in a private hospital, premier league footie players have private healthcare via the club they play for, 🤐

This isn’t unique to the NHS either - whether it’s banking, HMRC tax, Universal Credit/government departments, bill providers it is not acceptable to snoop at records without business need. Even if the person wouldn’t mind you taking a look at their record. You can’t even search your own record on these systems. It’s about business need, not personal - consent is irrelevant if it’s not coming from your manager.

Sometimes organisations use internal markers that the record holder shouldn’t be made aware of too eg fraud markers or concerns from 3rd parties - this kind of information would be left off a subject access request. By passing on business-side information, you might be tipping someone off about something you shouldn’t.

If someone went missing, the police should have been informed. It is completely inappropriate for a NHS staff member to take it upon themselves to access medical records to pass on location information to the family directly. What if the family are abusive or estranged?

All these systems are monitored. Who you search and how often, what you click on exactly, how long you spend on what section etc. Whether you copied and pasted something, or took a screenshot, or printed something. There’s a comprehensive amount of data they can collect and link back to the employee. They can retain this information for longer than 2 years too.

I wonder if that protocol has changes because my mum's been in hospital a few times since her ate 70s and when I've rung up, the ward ask how I'm related and then they tell me how she's doing. I've never been denied information.

You'd definitely get in trouble. I'm not sure if it's a sackable offense but it's taken very seriously, you are not allowed to access anyone's record without a good reason/unless you are involved in their care. Accessing your own records or those of friends or family would be a massive issue.

Dhs ex did this to me
When she found out i was pregnant via shared friends with our second she accessed my info and told him i lied and I wasn't... she screen shot my records and sent it to him. Then messaged saying don't tell anyone I sent this or I will be sacked. I reported it. Nothing happened. They didn't even bother checking and dismissed me! We had moved to a different part of the UK so.it hadn't shown up on her system and dh had been to the scans with me ffs. She also saw info from my childhood that even I didn't know! She was an agency nurse so not sure if she had Limited access.

Still pisses me off 9 years later. But she passed away now so I haven't said anything to DH. He just ignored her though and was angry I reported it at the time as he said now if she loses her job she will hold a vendetta against us and go more crazy.

She was proper crazy though. They had no kids, no marriage and no.assets together but she was obsessed with him. Found our jobs details whenever we moved and would turn up and do some weird knock down ginger shit.

I still have the message all these years later. I've attached so you can see what info she had access to. I've cut off her contact details and ours.

This and this

@Dressydress that is awful. I’m not surprised you’re still mad about it. My ex-h’s ex was pretty batshit so glad she didn’t work in the nhs.

Depends on management.
when I worked in a pathology department a senior manager wanted to see her teenage dd’s blood test results and asked my colleague to access them.
My colleague was quite young and did as asked but i reported what had happened to our manager. It was dismissed as shouldn’t happen but never mind.

At the trust I work in, a very famous person was a patient a few years ago. A number of staff who weren't looking after him accessed his patient record. These people were all reprimanded but no one was sacked.

It's in the Information Governance mandatory training that the scenario you've described is not allowed and is a sackable offence.