Because interactions with patients are fundamental to my education, discussing these interactions is often necessary to convey my growth and development in the process of becoming a doctor. This poses a problem when discussing patients could possibly compromise their privacy. There are federal regulations for protecting patient confidentiality, as outlined by HIPAA. I am well aware of these regulations and make every effort to abide by them. However, I feel compelled to outline the steps that I personally take to protect my patients' confidentiality here on this blog.
When discussing patients, I randomly change the patient's age, gender, and diagnosis. There are some patients, though, who have gender-specific diseases or whose diagnosis is central to the discussion. In those instances, I change other aspects of the patient's story to adequately protect his or her privacy. Also, I wait a variable amount of time before publishing a post about a patient. This time delay may be a year or longer if I'm especially concerned about confidentiality, but most often I wait a few days to a few weeks, or until the end of a clerkship.
If any of my readers are concerned about my general approach to discussing patients on this blog, or about a particular patient-related blog post, I invite them to contact me so I may address those concerns in a timely manner:
onbecomingadoc [at] gmail [dot] com
