DHB nurse sorry for snooping on patients

A nurse who snooped through more than 1000 private health records has admitted her actions have eroded public trust in the health system.

In a charge brought by the Nursing Council’s Professional Conduct Committee (PCC), the nurse was alleged to have accessed health records ‘‘without justification or authorisation’’ when she worked at an unnamed district health board.

She was found guilty of sifting through 64 people’s private records and more than 1000 documents between November 2011 and May 2013, and was suspended for 18 months.

The nurse’s name, her former workplace, and personal health details are suppressed in the judgment, in which she is referred to as ‘‘Ms T’’.

She appeared before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal in Wellington. Capital & Coast DHB said she was not employed there, ‘‘to the best of our knowledge’’. She was not employed at Wairarapa DHB either.

Hutt Valley DHB said it did not comment on tribunal matters in which details have been suppressed.

‘‘Ms T’’ admitted having accessed medical records of district nurses, and those of other people she knew.

She said she acted on behalf of other nurses who were scheduled to visit patients. These nurses wanted to know whether anything in the records of these patients, or the patients families, might raise safety concerns.

Systems in place at the DHB where she worked were not consistent, which meant she also tried to work out how clinical decisions

"Cases like this one have the potential to erode public trust in the health system ..." Spokesman for the privacy commissioner

had been made by looking at other records.

She felt that, if she ‘‘looked at the information of friends and seven colleagues who had told me part of their personal and sometimes medical history, I could better make sense of how clinical decisions had been made’’.

She offered an apology to patients and acknowledged they had lost trust with the DHB due to her actions. ‘‘I know that this serious misconduct has caused harm to many individuals who now have to live with the fact that their records have been accessed inappropriately,’’ Ms T said.

‘‘I also acknowledge that I have caused harm to [the] DHB who had to inform multiple patients that their records had been inappropriately accessed.

‘‘I understand that this has breached the trust that exists between patients and health practitioners.‘‘

A spokesman for the privacy commissioner said: ‘‘Cases like this one have the potential to erode public trust in the health system, and that’s why DHBs and health professional groups take the matter of employee browsing very seriously.

‘‘[Many] DHBs have electronic audit processes which can reveal if employee browsing has taken place and with what frequency.’’

Ms T was dismissed in 2013 when the offending came to light, and she has since changed career.