RCN Congress: Ebola, privacy and 'care bundles'
The first discussion at RCN Congress #RCN26 on Nursing as a STEM profession, or STEAM, with the arts added, became a resolution:
https://www.rcn.org.uk/congress/congress-events/nursing-as-a-stem-profession-2026
This was marvellous as it touched so many aspects that Hodges' model readily encompasses.
There is scope for the addition of emergency items:
https://www.rcn.org.uk/congress/Submit-an-emergency-agenda-item
Yesterday I wondered about the latest ebola outbreak, national and international aid^. Plus, privacy, having noticed a stream on twitter regards the NHS and a contract with Palantir. Yes, 'X' as a source is a problem, but concerns about access to confidential clinical information is found in the quality press. What does the Information Commissioner's Office say? Well, it seems there is a history:
https://icosearch.ico.org.uk/s/search.html?collection=ico%7Esp-search&query=PALANTIR&profile=_default
While searching for 'care bundles' I came across this:
'The scope and force of medical privacy is further supported by a secondary layer of protections based in sectoral and other forms of regulation. Anti-discrimination laws, disability rights, and employment law, for example, all recognize and operate to preserve medical privacy by restrictions of use of medical information outside of the medical setting.
These intersecting normative strands of medical privacy, derived from different sources, together form a set of norms designed to protect a bundle of interests that is essential to the maintenance of an effective healthcare system that encourages and protects appropriate care-seeking and treatment. Whether and how technological changes in the collection, storage, and processing of data affect the construct of medical privacy is a pressing question. Just as a bell cannot be unrung, erosion of the sphere of medical privacy is unlikely to be restored.' p.330.
I realised over the past twenty years or so I've paid less attention to the fact that sections of a population, those often most in need of healthcare will not engage, be care-seeking - if they have no faith and trust in how their information is managed and protected. Minority groups, the digitally excluded (whether by choice, or literacy, economics) the influence of media are all vulnerable. Protection of data and the integrity of health services and systems is surely a matter of professional import both clinically and informaticians? As a registrant, I've always put it to student nurses that they should be aware of what happens to the data they as a registered nurse, enter in the electronic health record.
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
