patient confidentiality during shadowing

[LadyBulldog]

i was just wondering if it would be ok to tell about a particular experience that happend when shadowing, a particular patient to be exact and her symptoms, if i don't mention the name?

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[nicholonious]

i was just wondering if it would be ok to tell about a particular experience that happend when shadowing, a particular patient to be exact and her symptoms, if i don't mention the name?

Yeah, you have to fib/change much of the stuff (mainly location, places, and names).

Wait, what is this for? work experience/activities for AMCAS?

 

[LizzyM]

If it is a common name and a common symptom, then I wouldn't bother to change it (i.e. Alice having chest pain radiating to her jaw) but I wouldn't use a first and last name. If it is a very unusual symptom or a very small setting then you might want to change it although be sure to keep a copy of your application to review before you interview - you'd hate to be asked about Susie's chest pain and draw a blank because you changed Sally to Susie.

When you use real names, interesting things can happen...

A friend who was on an adcom lost her son who was disabled. When she came back to work she got an application to read. In it, the applicant listed the name of a school for the disabled where he'd been a volunteer. In his PS he wrote that his experience with D___ (he used the boy's real name) greatly influenced his decision to go into medicine. D___ was the adcom member's son! She asked that someone else make a decision on that application.

I was reading an supplemental that asked the applicant to describe the ideal attributes of a physician. The applicant wrote about Dr. B__ who had taken care of her in the student health office. It was my brother she was writing about! I didn't know whether to admit her immediately as a great judge of character, recuse myself, or have her come in and show her us her scar to see if this Dr. B was as technically competent as he was empathetic!

 

[LizzyM]

i was just wondering if it would be ok to tell about a particular experience that happend when shadowing, a particular patient to be exact and her symptoms, if i don't mention the name?

oops! Didn't really answer your question. If you don't mention the name, it might be okay although if you were to say that you saw a 83 year old woman with a community acquired pneumonia who turned out to have anthrax you might not have to mention her name because anyone who knows the case would know who you were talking about. If it is a less famous case (a 36 year old diabetic woman who is pregnant after having had 5 miscarriages and no living children), then it might be OK in terms of pt privacy.

 

[nockamura]

I think HIPAA laws state that you can use everything except names and/or addresses. But for every infraction it's something like a year in jail and a $25,000 fine. In my PS I used a case I observed as an EMT and just changed her name.

 

[LadyBulldog]

thanks guys! liz, that's a funny story

i was thinking about using it for another essay, but ended up changing my mind anyways.