A systematic review of interventions to improve health privacy pratices of healthcare professionals/
Roren Marie Chin, Jenniffer Paguio
- Pages 49-63: Illustrations: 27 cm
Privacy and confidentiality of health data are critical components in delivering quality healthcare services to patients. Despite awareness of legal and ethical obligations to protect patient privacy, privacy violations, and confidentiality breaches persist in healthcare facilities. Hence, this systematic review aims to review and evaluate existing studies to determine factors influencing patient privacy practices among healthcare professionals and identify reasonable and appropriate interventions that effectively improve patient privacy practices in clinical settings and prevent future violations of patient privacy. Six (6) databases (Clinical key, Nursing Reference Center Plus, Oxford Academic, ProQuest, PubMed, and Science Direct) were used to search for studies related to the health privacy practices of healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, published from 1995 - 2022. A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the PICO framework based on relevant Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms, variant keywords, and their truncations. The initial advanced search generated 55,625 papers which were reduced to nine (9) studies based on the criteria set and following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) diagram of the systematic review screening process. Papers were appraised for quality using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklist for quasi-experimental studies and cross-sectional studies, and the Rapid Critical Appraisal tool for quality improvement projects and descriptive studies. Results indicate that factors related to privacy practices of healthcare providers include knowledge and awareness of the rights of patients to privacy and confidentiality, organizational structures and processes such as policies, protocols, procedures, and the physical layout of a department or unit. Studies also identified that interventions that effectively improve health privacy practices were those that provide education and training to healthcare providers specific to privacy and confidentiality and the implementation of appropriate and reasonable policies and security measures. In conclusion, healthcare sector investment in developing and implementing privacy-protective policies and processes, spatial infrastructure improvements, and building healthcare providers privacy awareness help to ensure patient rights to privacy are protected.