Competency C
Define
For me, a register nurse, who is pursuing a career in health informatics, my understanding of competency C is that a qualified health informatics need to be aware of legal issues, regulation compliance, and ethical code that are guiding health informatics professionals in terms of patient privacy, patient safety, cyber security, information risk management, data accessibility and sharing. HIMSS (Healthcare Informatics and Management System and Society) stated that in healthcare information management field, ethical and legal issue is as important as IT printless, systems lifecycle management and medical technology management (Morawski,2021). The professional role of informatics is to support healthcare professionals to provide patient care safely and efficiently by using knowledge of technology and skills of healthcare workflow management. Both information technology and health data management require informatics to be aware of ethical and cybersecurity issues that impact the outcome of healthcare information management. As a nurse, I have been using EHR for years. Personal experience of using EHR and participating EHR implementation in healthcare organizations taught me that ethical and security issues caused by data breach challenges healthcare informatics in gathering and analyzing healthcare data. According to Irwin, five common causes of data breach are “weak and stolen credentials”, “application vulnerabilities”, “malware”,” malicious insiders”, and “insider error” (Irwin, 2022). A health informatics that competent in
Discuss
The causes that I took prepared me to be a qualified informatics by emphasizing the skills of managing ethical and cybersecurity issue. INFM 202 Informatics: Security Overview taught me the fundamental concepts of networking security, compliance, and risk issues that exist in information system. Through INFM208 Information Security: Info Assurance, I learned the risk management principles and techniques, and apply those rules to information security and privacy risks as well. I also learned how to evaluate, design, an information assurance program. INFM 207 Digital Asset Management, I learned concepts of security and ethics related to digital asset management when designing and implementing a healthcare DAM program.
Evidence
Evidence 1
INFM 202 Informatics: Security Overview
I finished 15 cybersecurity lab courses and completed a Verizon 2020 Data Breach Report. Although it is only a one-unit class, it gave me a great opportunity to gain hand-on skills on technical of cybersecurity as a network administration. It also provides me a concept, scale, and consequence of data security violation. The hand on learning process provided me a real-world experience and knowledge, and it ensured me to develop skills faster.
Evidence 2
INFM 208 information Security-Information Assurance
I completed a project, in which I conducted a risk identifying, value estimating, data classification and its security category and the a plan to protect critical information technology assets. I also learned skills to assess information risk vulnerability and apply technical methods to reduce the risk.
Evidence 3
INFM 207 DAM- Digital Assents Management,
The project provided me a opportunity to design a digital assets management system for a wound care center. I followed Florida law to maintain medical records for five years after the last patient contact, and hospitals must maintain them for seven years. My strategy is to delete the digital record five years after the last patient visit. I also considered copyright issue by allowing patient to sign consent to be recorded when receiving the wound care treatment, because prohibits recording patients without consent. Videos and photos have to be shared with a wound care certificate program. My strategy is to consult with copyright attorney because the videos and photos are subject to copyright from the moment it created.I also attempted to protect patients privacy through HIPPA policies through administrative processes, physical safeguards, and technical controls.
Summary:
The courses that I accomplished prepared me awareness of legal and ethical issues in health informatics field. The projects that I finished and provided me an opportunity to think like a leadership in terms of law and regulation compliance. Indeed, like all care professionals, health informatics must handle ethical and legal issues in the workplace frequently. That is the reason a qualified healthcare informatics, especially me, should accept the suggestions that given by Aluas:
“1) be informed of the rights, duties, and responsibilities linked to their profession and laws in force; 2) have guidelines and ethical tutoring on what they need to do in order to avoid or prevent conflict or misconduct; 3) have renewed specific training on how to interpret and translate legal frameworks into internal rules and standards of good practice.”
Reference:
Aluas, M. (2016). Ethical and Legal Considerations of Healthcare Informatics. Applied MedicalInformatics.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326271572_Ethical_and_Legal_Considerations_of_Healthcare_Informatics
Irwin, L. (2022, April 28). The 5 most common causes of data breaches. IT Governance BlogEn. https://www.itgovernance.eu/blog/en/the-most-common-causes-of-data-breaches-and-how-you-can-spot-them
Morawski, T. S. (2021, May 17). Health informatics.HIMSS. https://www.himss.org/resources/health-informatics#Part1