A nurse at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary has been given a caution period of 12 months for accessing the medical records of patients when she was not permitted to do so.
After an in-depth hearing with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Rachael Stephen was found to have used her position to access multiple patients' health records, as well as her own.
Stephen also changed her IT permission preferences to view patients out with the ward she was working on, without any clinical justification and/or permission.
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The NMC took evidence from an unnamed Clinical Nurse Manager for Orthopaedics and Major Trauma at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh who initially noticed there was an issue. The council noted that after returning from maternity leave at this time, a routine audit on the IT system that is used at the hospital - TRAK - found that Stephen had identified 37 different health records, including that of her own and her new-born baby.
Other records were that of patients within different wards in the hospital or at a completely different location within the health board. The hearing continued: "A further investigation was carried out, and it transpired that there were 11 more records that you had allegedly accessed inappropriately, giving a total of 48 records. It was also discovered that you had changed your TRAK permission preferences so that you could view all the wards within the Board, including those at different hospitals to where you worked without any apparent clinical justification.
"On 24 May 2019, an investigatory meeting was held, at which you explained about writing your password on a post-it note and suggested that it may have fallen off your badge; therefore, anyone could have used your password to access TRAK. The investigation showed the times when TRAK had been accessed.
"It showed that some of the records that were allegedly inappropriately accessed had been viewed within a very short timeframe of when you had used TRAK to enter or retrieve data for a patient on your ward, and even, on some occasions in between other seemingly legitimate uses for your patients on your ward using your login."
A 12-month caution order was imposed by the council given that Stephen violated several patient's right to privacy, abused a position of trust within her job setting and the fact that the misconduct occurred on several occasions.
However, the committee were satisfied that Stephen showed remorse for her actions, underwent training and is now accessing the system in the correct manner. No physical harm came of Miss Stephen's actions and she ultimately cooperated throughout the NMC's investigation.
Janis Butler, Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development for NHS Lothian, said: “We do not comment on individual members of staff. Any allegation of misconduct or any other form of inappropriate behaviour is taken very seriously and investigated thoroughly using recognised processes.”
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