The University of Phoenix College of Health Professions conducted a survey recently that involved 504 full time registered nurses (RNs) and administrative staff across the United States The results show that RNs who had their position for at least two years are confident that their healthcare organization can prevent data breaches.
48% of RNs and 57% of administrative staff are very confident their organization has the ability to prevent data breaches and protect patients from data theft. When asked about data breaches occurring in their organization, 20% of RNs and 19% of administrative staff knew that data breaches had occurred in their organization in the past and 21% were not aware if a breach had occurred.
25% of RNs and 40% of administrative staff said healthcare organizations made a lot of changes in the past years to improve their ability to protect data and patient privacy. The areas that had most of the changes include safety, population health, the quality of care, data security and digitalization of health records.
To give an idea on the changes implemented, 67% of RNs and 69% of administrative staff confirmed that privacy and data access policies had been updated to protect patient data. 56% of RNs and 55% of administrative staff said that data surveillance had been implemented for better data privacy and security. 59% of RNs and 60% of administrative staff said role based access to medical records was implemented.
RNs and administrative staff were getting privacy and security training. 23% of RNs and 34% of administrative staff did not recognize the benefit of the training, while 50% of administrative staff and 2 out of 5 RNs think they could benefit from more training in this area.