Isolation signs changing in light of confidentiality
Reader Question: Several facilities in California have been advised to remove isolation/precaution signage for purposes of patient privacy. How can this be addressed and still provide necessary information?
Answer: Concern for patient privacy is increasing across the United States. Much of the signage that has been employed for infection control does indeed relay the diagnosis of a patient. For example, several facilities use placards for instructions that may reveal the diagnosis of the patient as having methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, tuberculosis, or Clostri dium difficile.
There now is a tendency toward the appropriate concern of protecting patients’ rights and not revealing this diagnosis to people who may walk by a patient’s room. Therefore, it likely will be necessary to change signs accordingly.
Examples from some institutions that wish to continue instructions at the patient’s door include changing the categories of precautions to nondescript categories (e.g., precautions A, precautions B, precautions C, etc.). Other institutions have placed general notification messages instructing health care personnel and visitors to check at the nurses’ station for more specific instructions. At the present time, it is only at the nurses’ station in the Kardex or in the patient’s record that accurate diagnosis and instructions can be kept with appropriate confidentiality.
Regardless of the method chosen, the concept is likely here to stay and will increase in importance. The patient’s privacy must be respected, and at the present time that is clearly leaning toward methods that remove specific diagnoses from being visible to the public.
Answered by Patrick Joseph, MD, chief executive officer, California Infection Control Consultants, San Ramon
[Editor’s note: Readers are invited to suggest infection control questions for this column to Editor, Hospital Infection Control, P.O. Box 680, Winterville, GA 30683; or fax them to (706) 742-2516. The name of the reader will not run with the question, which we will pass along to our clinical consultants for answers. Due to editorial demands we can only provide published answers in upcoming issues of the newsletter.]
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