This presentation comprises of policies and procedures in the Canadian healthcare system.

1. Policies and Procedure Presentation
Submitted by:
Andrea Foulds
Dawinder Singh
Harpreet Kaur Brar
Rangada Shah
Twinkle Vashist.
Submitted to: Dixie Heron

2. INTRODUCTION
• There have been many cases of privacy breaches in all over Canada
recently in healthcare field and even in different sectors.
• A privacy breach is the loss of, unauthorized access to, or disclosure of,
personal information.
• Some of the most common privacy breaches happen when personal
information is stolen, lost or mistakenly shared(Officer of the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada, 2016).

3. CASE DISCUSSION
• In British Columbia, JG, a nurse was fired because of
having unauthorized access to medical records of 74
patients without prior permission.
• It was also found out that the nurse was aware of
violating the laws and accessing personal records of
family members and other co-workers.
• When this kind of confidentiality breach came into light,
the healthcare institution fired her and the B.C college of
nursing handed her a 30-day suspension.
• After the 30 day suspension, JG also agreed to undergo a
complete consultation on regulatory practice(Proctor
Jason, CBC News, 2018).

4. PRIVACY POLICY
❖It is also called as confidential policy.
❖Information from the patient may be collected on reception desk
in the form of electronic records(e-records)or paper records.
❖According to privacy act and PIPEDA, hospital staff cannot have
access to the patient’s information, clinical investigation,
diagnosis, treatment and patient outcome in hospital settings or
in a private institution without a specific reason and permission
on legal grounds.
❖It should maintain information of each individual in a secure
manner and also should only use the information for medical
purposes only, provided the patient is aware about it(Rouse
Margaret, 2013).

5. HOW IT WAS VIOLATED
❖Generally, according to the above stated laws, staff should
only access patient records if they have a valid medical
reason for it, but she didn’t had any reason to check these
74 individuals records.
❖She just used it for her own purpose and to check records
of coworkers family members which is legally not
correct(Proctor Jason, CBC News, 2018).
❖Thus it can be said that, she did not follow the instruction
and violated the privacy laws and the Personal
Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
(PIPEDA)

6. WHO WAS AFFECTED?
➢ As we know that, records of 74 patients were
improperly accessed by Jennifer Goodman.
➢ So due to this action there were many repercussions
which not only surrounded around the nurse but also
the co-workers, organization and the patients.
➢ In this case, nurse got fired from the organization and
also got suspended from the college of nursing for a
month.
➢ Organization had to suffer because of this incident and
got a bad image in the healthcare field.

7. HOW WERE THEY AFFECTED?
❖ By looking up the patient's personal information
improperly, Jennifer ran the risk of making the records
public to anyone.
❖ Luckily the health care facility seemed to have caught
the issue before it was too late. If it had, many patients
likely would have felt violated and some possibly could
have sued the company.
❖ Because of her actions, this company could have faced
thousands of dollars in fines, as well as loss of patients
and clients due to fear of their private information
being viewed by anyone.

8. CHANGES
❖Due to this incident, healthcare institution got aware
and made few changes to avoid this kind of event in
future.
1. New employees have to sign a confidentiality
agreement.
2. Annual refreshment course: In this course, the staff
members will undergo a training process at regular time
intervals about avoiding unintentional and intentional
disclosure of personal information.

9. SUGGESTIONS
❖ EVALUATION: online test so that we can check the employee
like how much they know about privacy and also give
rewards.
❖ When disposing computer and hard disc the patients
information should be permanently deleted.
❖ Remember to update passwords regularly and do not give
your password to someone else.
❖ Avoid to use free network or wireless network (hot spot)
while sharing patients information for medical purposes.

10. IMPORTANCE OF THE POLICIES
• A Policy is usually a set of rules that aim us to guide managers
and workers that how to behave at a workplace.
• The importance of having a clear policy and procedures is as
following:
a. This helps employees to know which things they can do in
hospitals and which things they can not do.
b. It will help employees to know how they should handle
different situations according to policies and procedures act.

11. WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF
POLICIES?
• If this policy would have been followed properly in that
hospital then nurse would never have accessed the private
medical records of the patients.
• She would not have been suspended from her work if she
would have followed these privacy laws.
• So, it is very important to have a clear policies and procedures
implemented in hospitals, so that this type of problem never
rises again.

12. How will this knowledge (regarding policies &
procedures) affect you as a future HAA?
• As an HAA- we are the first point of contact for the patients, so it is really
important to have proper knowledge regarding policies and procedures of
the hospital.
• Being an HAA, if we know about current policies we can prevent
intentional and unintentional privacy breaches.
• Such as log off the monitor whenever you leave your desk, do not face the
monitor towards the patients, update your password regularly and last
but not the least is to access the patient records upto your scope of
practice and permissible area and not beyond that.
• If an HAA follows these kind of rules then, it will be a lot easier for the
organization and also for other healthcare professionals.

13. • Knowing about policies will definitely save their jobs and avoid being
suspended or fired.
• It will help in gaining patients trust in the healthcare organization.
• HAA can also ensure while gaining information from the patients that the
information collected will only be used for medical purposes and not
anything else.
• This will ensure confidentiality of the patient medical records.
• As an HAA I should also know that, which information is collected for
which purpose.

14. CONCLUSION
• Thus to conclude, in this assignment, we learned as
HAA’s that we have to be very careful with the
access that we have to the system and patient
information, to make sure any privacy of patients
and staff are not shared to anyone, and that all
policies are followed correctly.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UOx4HJwU5
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16. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Officer of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2016, November 01).
Privacy Breaches. Retrieved from www.priv.gc.ca:
https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-breaches/
• Proctor Jason, CBC News. (2018, January 05). Former Island Health nurse
suspended over privacy breach. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/island-health-
privacy-breach-1.4473934
• Rouse Margaret. (2013, October). Privacy policy. Retrieved from
techtarget.com: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/privacy-policy