Every day I'm coming home with interesting stories. Unfortunately there's a problem. While I suppose some of this stuff would make great blog material. But the entry would have to read like this:
"So at work one day I had this patient and he had this condition. It was pretty bizarre because he got it doing something somewhere. Since he didn't come in for a week we had to do this procedure. But he's doing well now and once we do something else he can probably go home."
The federal government has some very strict rules in place regarding privacy of patients and what goes on in a medical setting. So in order to follow HIPAA I can't really talk about what goes on at work. Yes, I'm exaggerating a little bit. I can talk about things as long as I'm very careful to include nothing that can identify the person...and unfortunately for publishing on the internet that's a lot of detail to weed out.
What's it all mean? If you want to hear some interesting stories...and if you aren't terribly squeemish...and you're willing to come over to my house for dinner then maybe, just maybe, I can edit down my day into something I can legally talk about.
But I won't promise anything. It was a heck of a day.
Posted on January 30, 2007 @ 9:27 PM | 4 comments
Comments:
As long as you have only one identifier, you should be ok. So, a "male with a heart attack" would be ok... but "a 16-year-old male with a heart attack" would not.
Of course, low-incidence diseases could be considered identifiable (as a single identifier) in some situations. But, most diseases would not.
By 
Cory, at
9:32 PM, January 31, 2007
hey justin - would like to hear more about your week... u make dinner (after the long week) -- i bring the wine for us all... dinner, music, laughs, us n guitar hero. LOL!!
By 
, at
11:04 PM, January 31, 2007
Cory, you're right that I could probably talk about my clients to a certain extent. I have though already said where I worked this quarter and given the nature of the internet I don't like the chance that someone could read this blog (however unlikely) and say "Hey...my mom just had a heart attack and is at HMC!"
Further, the parts I really would like to talk about aren't the injury itself. Sure, it's ok for me to say that I took care of a patient with a head wound. But that's drab. It would be more interesting for me to say I took care of a patient with a self inflicted head wound from a wood chipper. And really...how many people are there at HMC with head wounds from wood chippers?
Sadly I have some pretty unique cases (did I just say "sadly"...that's like asking to deal with cold and flu all next quarter)...with interesting detail (a) and the location (b) I bet you could pick my patients out of a lineup if they lived in your community :)
By Justin, at
9:37 AM, February 02, 2007
You know, the wood chipper example above is, if I may say, pretty freekin awesome. So awesome, that I would like to suggest that Justin entertain us and share his work stories in the following way:
Replace ALL the details. So YOU'LL know it's a self-inflicted head wound via wood chipper, but you could say bear-inflicted neck wound via batleth instead. See? We'd all win. ;)
By inkandpen, at
10:56 AM, February 02, 2007
