HIPAA regulations and personal statement

[wheredshego]

How much detail can I go into in describing my shadowing experience without getting in trouble with privacy laws? Right now my personal statement discloses the fact that Kid X suffered an injury to the ___, he had ___ surgery, and he completed physical therapy and was released after ___ amount of time. Is this okay?

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[Grobe57214]

I think its OK as long as you don't mention the kid's name.

 

[NickNaylor]

How much detail can I go into in describing my shadowing experience without getting in trouble with privacy laws? Right now my personal statement discloses the fact that Kid X suffered an injury to the ___, he had ___ surgery, and he completed physical therapy and was released after ___ amount of time. Is this okay?

That's fine. Absolutely don't mention his name. I would avoid mentioning the medical center as well as an extra precaution, but I don't think this is necessary.

 

[ucladoc2b]

Change the name. Don't be too specific with the details, and you should be fine.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

How much detail can I go into in describing my shadowing experience without getting in trouble with privacy laws? Right now my personal statement discloses the fact that Kid X suffered an injury to the ___, he had ___ surgery, and he completed physical therapy and was released after ___ amount of time. Is this okay?

How common is the injury? Rarer = easier to look up online.

 

[shoebusiness85]

Wow...this info kind of freaks me out.

A large portion of my statement talks about an interesting interaction I had with a patient while working at a clinic.

The patient gave me permission to talk about him, but I refer to him by a different name nonetheless to protect his privacy (I go into some detail about his condition).

Should I explicitly mention that I have changed his name for the purposes of the essay, or that he gave me permission, or is that just understood by AdComs?

 

[Depakote]

Wow...this info kind of freaks me out.

A large portion of my statement talks about an interesting interaction I had with a patient while working at a clinic.

The patient gave me permission to talk about him, but I refer to him by a different name nonetheless to protect his privacy (I go into some detail about his condition).

Should I explicitly mention that I have changed his name for the purposes of the essay, or that he gave me permission, or is that just understood by AdComs?

For the most part, you should be able to work around this. Keep in mind your personal statement is about you, not the patient you saw. If you're going into details discussing the patient's name, condition, etc... you might be getting off track.

In general, I'd err on the side of being a bit more vague for two reasons:
1.) it avoids any implication that you're violating patient privacy
2.) it avoids shifting the focus from you to the patient

 

[shoebusiness85]

I just mean that it is nice to be able to refer to a name in the parts that I talk about him, instead of repeating something ambiguous like "this patient" over and over again. I basically have one sentence that discusses his condition because it is crucial to my interaction with him, and crucial to covey the point I'm trying to make about why I want to be a doctor. And I later refer to him near the end of my essay to tie things together.

I have changed his name, but I don't know whether I should *explicitly state* that I changed his name for the purposes of this essay, so AdComs don't think I'm violating HIPPA.

 

[NormaMD]

Last year I used a fake name for a patient in my personal statement. I didn't specify that the name was fake--I just assumed that it would be understood by the adcoms. This was never a problem at all.

You can use a name with a very small number of characters to stay under the limit!

 

[mvenus929]

Good rule of thumb... change enough details so that someone who knows him (or her) doesn't know that you're talking about him. For instance, don't mention name, age (general age is fine... adolescent, young adult, child, toddler, etc), location, etc. As someone else said, the more rare the condition, the less likely you should speak of it outside a hospital setting.

FWIW, I know people who got fired for taking pictures of an X-ray to show their friends. Even though there was no directly identifying information on the film itself, it was unique enough that someone who knew the patient complained to the hospital.