Privacy Recognition by Nurses and Necessity of Their Information Security Education

Because of advanced computerization, the number of hospitals in which nurses use computers to collect, check, input, and record patient information has increased. The expectation for subjective and responsible behaviors by individual nurses has increased along with changes in society. Clarifying nurses' recognition and security behaviors regarding patient privacy is important for patients and medical staff. The present study revealed that hospitals follow various information security measures, but some of the nurses working in the hospitals did not recognize any concrete security-maintaining measures; 40% of responding nurses answered that the range of information sharing could be restricted within each occupational group from the viewpoint of patients' privacy rights. In addition, some of the nurses were making efforts to hide a portion of patient information in their hospitals. In other cases, patients gave nurses concrete requests. Patients' knowledge of information privacy and their attitudes toward the privacy of patients may have begun to change. Because hospitals' electronization will continue to increase in the future, comprehensive information security education is important not only for nurses but for all other medical staff.