Identifying Timely Strategies to Protect Patient Privacy

Patient Privacy Policies: Search Strategy and Summary

Today, nursing professionals play a vital role in the provision of high-quality patient care, and possessing strong research skills is crucial for nursing professionals to remain up-to-date with the latest evidence-based practices and contribute to the advancement of the nursing field. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to identify relevant scholarly articles concerning patient privacy polices as well as the steps and strategies that were used to locate them. In this regard, a Google browser and the EBSCO academic database were used for searching for relevant juried articles. The filters applied to the search limited the results to full-text, peer-reviewed studies published in the English language within the last 5 years. The keywords used in these searches and the corresponding number of articles located were as follows: 1) “patient privacy policies” (54); 2) “patient privacy policies” and “nursing” (0); and “patient privacy” and “nursing” (54).

Finally, a summary of two selected articles is followed by a recap of the findings from the research in the conclusion.

Scholarly Articles: Identify at least three scholarly articles that have been published within the last five years:

1. Ak, B., Tanr?kulu, F., Gündo?du, H., Y?lmaz, D., Öner, Ö., Ziyai, N. Y., Erol, F., & Dikmen, Y. (2021). Cultural Viewpoints of Nursing Students on Patient Privacy: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Religion and Health, 60(1), 188–201.

2. Blease, C. (2024). Open AI meets open notes: surveillance capitalism, patient privacy and online record access. Journal of Medical Ethics, 50(2), 84–89.

3. Yilmaz, S. A. (2022). Patient privacy: a qualitative study on the views and experiences of nurses and patients. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 39(2), 12–22.

Article One: Summarize article one to accurately represent the content with a correctly cited direct quotation:

The study by Yilmaz (2022) explored the perspectives and experiences of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses and patients regarding patient privacy protection. Privacy is a fundamental right, especially for vulnerable ICU patients who may lack autonomy and the ability to advocate for themselves. In this regard, Yilmaz (2022) emphasizes that, “For these reasons, nurses should assume a primary role to protect patient privacy because they spend many hours with them and witness patients’ loneliness, pain, and [even] death as their primary caregivers” (p. 12). As primary caregivers, nurses play a crucial role in safeguarding patient privacy. This qualitative phenomenological study used interviews with 14 ICU nurses and 14 ICU patients between 2018-2019. Content analysis revealed categories and themes related to the concepts of privacy, privacy protection, and privacy violations.

The Yilmaz (2022) study found that both nurses and patients demonstrated adequate awareness of privacy issues, including physical privacy, information confidentiality, use of screens and curtains as well as the need for adequate staffing and resources; however, institutional factors such as insufficient nurse-to-patient ratios, overcrowding, and facility limitations were identified as contributing to privacy breaches. Although every health care setting is unique, of course, these issues are essentially universal in most countries today.

One of the more noteworthy findings to emerge from this study was that many patients were reluctant to report privacy violations, fearing it could negatively impact their care. This finding was in spite of the fact that the patients in the study were knowledgeable concerning their privacy rights which further underscores the vulnerability of this population during critical healthcare episodes. The study also highlighted the importance of increased awareness, policy measures, and resource allocation to support patient privacy rights and enhance healthcare quality and satisfaction.

Article Two: Summarize article two to accurately represent the content with a correctly cited paraphrase.

The study by Blease (2024) emphasized that the implementation of patient online record access (ORA) is rapidly expanding globally, thereby allowing patients direct access to their full electronic health records. While ORA offers benefits such as increased patient empowerment, better treatment understanding, a therapeutic rapport and medication awareness, these advantages may not be fully realized without supplementary internet resources to aid patient interpretation and understanding; however, access to online tools also exposes sensitive patient data to internet corporations, raising privacy concerns.

The study highlights the fundamental trade-offs that are invariably involved between leveraging online resources for better patient understanding and the potential exposure of sensitive health data to corporations. Finally, the study concludes by citing the need to for policies to address these privacy challenges in a timely fashion given the rapidly expanding use of online resources to ensure patient empowerment while safeguarding patient data confidentiality (Blease, 2024).