The Catch to Confidentiality: The Use of Electronic Health Records in Adolescent Health Care.

Purpose: This study aims to understand pediatric health-care providers' expectations and the practices they employ to protect confidentiality in electronic health records (EHRs) and subsequently how EHRs affect the documentation and dissemination of information in the course of health-care delivery to adolescent minors.

Methods: Twenty-six pediatric health-care providers participated in in-depth interviews about their experiences using EHRs to understand a broad spectrum of expectations and practices guiding the documentation and dissemination of information in the EHR. A thematic analysis of interviews was conducted to draw findings and conclusions.

Privacy in practice: professional discourse about information control in health care.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore different health care professionals' discourse about privacy - its definition and importance in health care, and its role in their day-to-day work. Professionals' discourse about privacy reveals how new technologies and laws challenge existing practices of information control within and between professional groups in health care, with implications not only for patient privacy, but also for the role of information control in professions more generally.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with n=83 doctors, nurses, and health information professionals in two academic medical centers and one veteran's administration hospital/clinic in the Northeastern USA.