Running head: ETHICAL AND SECURITY ISSUES OF HIT 1

Ethical and Security Issues of HIT

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Ethical and Security Issues of HIT

The use of health information technology [HIT] improves the quality of healthcare as

well as ensuring cost and time efficiency. The most commonly used technology is the Electronic

Health Record [EHR] that captures patients history, diagnosis, and treatment. However, the

collection of this information raises concerns about privacy, confidentiality, and consent. Patients

have a right to keep their information private. Therefore, they rely on the ethical competence of

healthcare professionals (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). An effective way of ensuring

confidentiality is to grant access only to authorized users. Nurses should facilitate this by not

revealing their EHR passwords and always logging out whenever physically away from the

computers. Moreover, nurses should seek consent from guardians before sharing information for

children, mentally challenged, or senile patients (Ozair et al., 2015).

During the paper era, accessing patients information was difficult because of effective

physical security measures. The use of HIT, however, exposed patient information to potential

breaches by cybercriminals or insiders (Wallace, 2015). However, new advances in HIT have

made it easier to protect patient security, especially high-performance encryptions. However,

individual-end users pose the greatest security even with strong organizational safeguards, for

instance, the use of portable devices such as laptops, smart phones, and USB flash drives to

capture or store patient information. Organizations should limit their use to home visits and e-

prescriptions to facilitate security.

My organization mainly uses usernames and passwords to safeguard patient information.

The level of access depends on the role in healthcare provision hence guaranteeing safety of

nursing documents, and treatment information. Additionally, only the senior staff have access to

share the information with other professionals. However, the organization focuses on the
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physical and logical controls, ignoring the administrative aspect. The most effective strategy to

address this is to formulate an organizational policy that emphasizes on the significance of

keeping patients information confidential to educate staff on security awareness.

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References

Mastrian, K. G., McGonigle, D., & Farcus, N. (2015). Ethical applications of informatics. In K.

G. Mastrian & D. McGonigle (Eds.), Nursing informatics and the foundation of

knowledge (3rd ed., pp. 67-87). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Ozair, F. F., Jamshed, N., Sharma, A., & Aggarwal, P. (2015). Ethical issues in electronic health

records: A general overview. Perspectives Clinical Research, 6(2), 73-76.

Wallace, I. M. (2015). Is patient confidentiality compromised with the electronic health record?

A position paper. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(2), 58-62.