Open AccessAssessment of Nursing Students’ Attitudes Towards Recording and Protecting Patients’ Personal Health Data: A Descriptive Study
Author(s) -
Sebahat Atalıkoğlu Başkan,
Papatya Karakurt,
Necla KASIMOĞLU
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
galician medical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2414-1518
DOI - 10.21802/gmj.2021.3.3
Subject(s) - descriptive statistics , medicine , test (biology) , data collection , personally identifiable information , nursing , scale (ratio) , descriptive research , medical education , family medicine , paleontology , statistics , physics , mathematics , computer security , quantum mechanics , computer science , biology
Introduction. Since health information is considered as sensitive personal dataand requires more careful protection, healthcare professionals need to be careful aboutthis issue.
The objective of this research was to determine nursing students’attitudes towards recording and protecting patients’ personal health data.
Materials and Methods. The population of this descriptive research consisted of 450students who studied at the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, ErzincanBinali Yildirim University. Sample selection was not used, and the research wascompleted with 374 students who were continuing education and who were accepted toparticipate in the research. Descriptive Information template and Attitude Scale forRecording and Protecting Personal Health Data for nursing students were used asdata-collection instruments. The numbers, percentage, mean, standard deviation,non-parametric tests (the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis test) were used indata analysis.
Results. Among our research participants, 68.4% of the students werefemales; 28.1% of the students were freshmen; 69% of the students were graduates ofAnatolian high schools. Approximately 72.5% and 52.9% of the participants stated thatthey were aware of the concept of “personal data” and “personal health data” ,respectively. The mean score of nursing students on the Attitude Scale for Recording andProtecting Personal Health Data was 3.97±0.71. The means scores obtained from subscaleswere as follows: 3.91±0.72 for Personal Health Data Information, 4.15±0.80 for LegalInformation, 4.05±0.94 for Legal Data Sharing, 3.90±0.80 for Personal Health DataSharing, and 3.77±0.33 for Recording of Personal Health Data, respectively. Astatistically significant difference was found between the total scale and subscalescores of the students regarding their academic level.
Conclusions. Students werefound to have a positive attitude towards recording and protecting personal data.Increasing the responsibilities and raising awareness of the students for the protectionof personal health data during their study is suggested to be important.