Question

You are a patient at seeing a Plastic Surgeon for a consultation. During your visit, the physician takes out his cell phone and takes several pictures of the areas for the surgery. During this process the physician explains that this will be a part of his before and after collection.

Is there a problem with him using his personal cell phone and not a camera dedicated to the medical practice? Did you sign some disclaimer saying photos could be taken for non-medical purposes? How do you feel about what the physician did? Are there any violation(s)? If so, explain. How would you handle this situation? Create a 2-3 page paper to answer the questions in this case study.

Answer 1

Medical photography

Medical and surgical procedures, medical devices, clinical presentation of cases, specimens from autopsy are the situations or thingsthat c an be documented with help of medical photography.

In the field of plastic surgery medical photography is an unavoidable one. Now a days 'smart phones' are increasingly used for such type of photography. But there are issues related to the smartphone use for such photography. Among that patient privacy issues and the use of photos by the physician afterwards are the main concern. A stud conducted in Canada shows that 73% of plastic surgeon keeps the photos with their personal photos and 26% of surgeons shown the photographs to friends and family.

It is advicable that the surgeon can use a camera that dedicated to the medical practice or A smartphone with an application of medical photography, that incorporates a written consent and also permits the photos to store externally.

It is not advisable that to sign on a disclaimer saying that photos are for non medical use. Any healthcare provider, if they want to use the patient's photos for marketing or fund raising, have to obtain written consent from the patient.

Health insurance portability and Accountability Act( HIPPA) support patient's data privacy and security. 'Any photo or vedio that could identify the patient may be subject to HIPPA restrictions( Trish Markus). He added that a doctor can take pictures of patients, rashes, before and after plastic surgery etc to include in Health Information System or patient's records and also for the purpose of research and medical study. But all these are allowed with written consent from the patients. In case of minor person or child parents or guardians has to sign on consent.