Taboo for chaperones to discuss their experiences even anonymously?

I started thinking about medical chaperones, how some of them are not doctors or nurses but just office receptionists or clerical staff. Of course it varies but in at least some offices they do use receptionists for that - you can find plenty of job listings for such positions. So, they must have people taking those positions.

So I think it's interesting to hear their impressions and experiences as a non-medically trained person but of course they can't really talk in detail because of confidentiality. But I'm surprised there aren't more of them talking about it anonymously or under some anonymous nickname. The very few I've seen were not very credible - looked more like someone just who makes up stuff.

You can find plenty of blogs and columns from doctors and nurses who discuss their experiences anonymously, without using patient names or any details that'd identify anybody or even what clinic/hospital. But for medical chaperones there seems to be nothing! Is it that taboo, even more than taboo for doctors to write blogs telling of their daily experiences?

CAN YOU SAY HIPAA?????

Indeed

But HIPAA doesn't really answer the question. It would apply just as much, if not more, to doctors and nurses, and the interwebs are loaded with blogs about their experiences. I've seen hundreds of those, all being careful to not identify individuals.

HIPAA doesn't cover non-identifying information. "I saw this and that at work today" is legal, "Mrs. Jones was in today" is not.

And yes, it's completely unethical for them to discuss this with others,

Maybe there just isn't much interesting to discuss or tell about being a chaperone ... isn't that the rationale for taking a chaperone into an exam with someone in the first place? To make sure it is as everyday, 13 in a dozen, routine and unexceptional as possible?

Agracier, you hit the nail on the head.

People want to believe that there is something interesting going on during those exams,

I'll say what I have said before,"feeling the patient's privates in an examination is as exciting as feeling a piece of fruit in the store to see if you want to buy it."

IT'S AN EXAM, NOT A PORNO MOVIE SET.

While not a chaperone per se, I've heard the coffee room discussion of unusual things seen or heard. No, not a play-by-play of routine BS, but interesting anatomy or body art/modifications. Identifying information is usually omitted.

"I saw a patient with an unusual piercing/tattoo/anatomy" type of discussion.

While I don't contend that the majority of doctors are completely professional while conducting exams, I can't find it plausible to be an absolute. Let's compare doctors to another profession which provides a similar amount of power to its members, police officers. I'm sure that the vast majority of officers view their duties as simply another mundane aspect of their job. However, I'm sure that there are those who exploit the power of their position and the authority it affords them. I'm sure the same holds true for those in the medical profession.

A big difference with law enforcement is that most of what they do is on the public record, unlike medicine - at least up to now.

Someone brought up police: for that matter there are thousands of blogs by police officers too. And dentists, lawyers, pilots, teachers, auto technicians, writers, salesmen, fast food workers... the last thing the internet has is people not talking about their jobs. But for some reason, this one in particular isn't, anywhere? People talk about how they organize their silverware drawers and clean their fish tanks, on the internet! People argue endlessly about the best brand of pen. The silence on this one just seems weird!

Something that I had to do while I had an internship for the state I live in, was look up medical board hearing notes. They have a stenographer recording everything they do in those sessions. During medical board hearings, the medical board members confront people regulated by it about alleged misconduct, the person or their attorney can make statements, and the medical board decides punishments - fines, suspensions, permanent revocations, etc.

Violations were anything from fraud related charges, DUIs, to sexual misconduct. Many times when a doctor gets in trouble with the law they have to discuss it with the governing body of that profession. More than half of what I went through, easily, was because of sexual misconduct or abuse of prescribing narcotics. Now...this included a range of things as far as the sex stuff went. There were doctors who got into relationships with people consensually (which they aren't supposed to do), and love them and everything, and might not get punished at all, the board might just reaffirm with them that it was unethical to do that and send them on their way. The other end of the spectrum was rape - and those people obviously lost their medical licenses and had much bigger problems to deal with. Most were in between, but closer to the first one. During these types of things obviously the patient's name was confidential and referred to in the investigation reports as 'Patient 1' or something like that - the reports get pretty graphic.

So there are definitely some people who abuse their authority in those professions - I had to do the same looking through the nursing board records and others as well - and I'm reasonably certain that in my state at least, someone who would chaperone for a doctor would be regulated by someone somewhere. I doubt a secretary would be back there, it would likely be an STNA, LPN or other. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but probably someone back there wouldn't be able or be willing to say anything, even anonymously, because of how seriously privacy concerns are taken. Personally if I were in a medical profession I wouldn't talk about much of anything just because of privacy concerns.

My wife and I recently actually almost went to the medical board for an issue at her last doctor's appointment concerning some things. She wanted to bring me, and the assistant very forcefully and loudly confronted her about it in the waiting room, in front of about ten people (half of whom were male patients - it was an internists office not an obgyn). So we finally got a hold of the office manager and he apologized and told her he'd make sure that everyone knew how to handle personal information, and what to do if the patient wants a family member to come back with them. He wasn't too happy to hear about how it went down and was really glad she called him. It really made her feel better, but she still isn't going back there.

As far as police go, I would be very surprised to find any who divulged personal info online about people they dealt with on the job, and it isn't even regulated quite as closely as medical privacy concerns are. They might reference an experience they had on the job but aren't supposed to divulge confidential information about people unless there's a clear reason for it.