Valoración de la importancia de la confidencialidad y del manejo adecuado de la historia clínica en el servicio de urgencias hospitalarias

Objective

Healthcare professionals sometimes forget their obligations regarding professional secrecy and confidentiality. Violating them is punishable by law. We carried out a study to evaluate the degree of knowledge about the use of secrecy and confidentiality of patients' medical information in the care practice of the professionals of the Hospital Emergency Service of a second level hospital.

Methods

An anonymous survey was designed with questions about daily activity in the Emergency Department related to confidentiality. They tried to evaluate, by all the professional groups involved in the care of patients in the Emergency Department, 4 aspects: the degree of workers' perception of confidentiality; knowledge in confidentiality and the desire to obtain that knowledge; the perception of unauthorized exchange or search for information; and the perception of physical means to safeguard privacy. The statistical tests chi-square, t-Student and ANOVA were used, with a level of statistical significance of p < 0.05.

Results

100 workers from all professional groups responded to the survey. Knowledge of confidentiality was adequate (69.25% of positive responses), and the perception of unauthorized information exchange and physical means to safeguard privacy were less good (55 and 55.9% of positive responses).

Conclusions

The management of confidentiality in the emergency department of our hospital has a large room for improvement.