Keeping Privacy on track with online training

CAMH Connexions

Computers are changing the way we live, work and learn, and CAMH is following the technological trend by taking advantage of the latest innovations to keep our staff up to date on new and emerging issues in the field of addiction and mental health. One of the tools that we've used with success is e-learning.
Recently, there have been changes to the rules about privacy and how Ontario's health sector can collect, use, keep, make known and destroy the Personal Health Information (PHI) of its clients/patients.

On November 1, 2004, the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) came into effect. Along with the introduction of the new legislation, organizations were responsible for ensuring that their staff understood the new Act and that they were in compliance with PHIPA. Quite a challenge, since CAMH needed to reach 2700 staff at many different locations, working at different times, and the training had to be completed within a relatively short period of time. In response to this challenge CAMH created an online Privacy Training Course for staff. The online Privacy training course was one part of a broader training program describing PHIPA. Because of the complexity of the legislation and the different needs of staff in different parts of the organization training ranged from presentations, targeted training, open forums and lunch and learns.

"The 10 privacy principles (which the legislation is based on) are necessary for everyone to learn, so the quiz at the end of the course was written in plain language to take into account the significant number of staff that don't work in a clinical setting," says Allen Flaming, the Privacy Training Course Developer.
There are many advantages to online training including the flexibility of having staff take the 20-minute course at their own convenience, at work or at home, instead of having to leave their job for a much longer time to attend an in-person information session. Imagine the inconvenience of having 2700 people trying to arrange their schedules to accommodate a training course, and then having to find replacement staff in their absence, it's not an easy task. Plenty of time and money is saved when training courses are conducted online. To date, over 80 per cent of our staff have taken the quiz so far and they were able to stay at work without a major interruption to their day, a foremost priority in making sure clients receive the best care and treatment at all times.

"The training course succeeded in being relevant to everyone, which is reflected in the extremely high staff satisfaction rating of 93 per cent and the majority of staff have said that having more e-learning courses at CAMH would be very valuable," says Allen.

At CAMH, clients are our primary focus and the staff who work here believe in client-centred care. This means that the rights of clients are respected and taken very seriously especially with regards to confidentiality of their Personal Health Information.

• Print
  Follow us on
  
  Share