With tiny video cameras becoming increasingly common, hospitals are finding it difficult to protect the privacy of patients and staff on hospital premises.
The controversy over whether video equipment can be used in patients' rooms surfaced last week when the family of a hospitalized woman decided to keep an eye on the comatose patient by installing a hidden video camera in her room at the National Taiwan University Hospital.
When nurses found the hidden camera, the hospital's management asked that the equipment be removed immediately, saying it violated the privacy of hospital workers who had been unaware they were being filmed. The camera was removed early last week.
The family defended its position, saying that the 24-hour camera surveillance was used to monitor the patient's health, according to the United Daily News.
The family also stressed that the patient had been staying in a single room.
"Even if the patient is to use video cameras, the hospital should be notified first. Otherwise, it stands in the way of the hospital's management practices and infringes upon the rights of hospital nurses and staff," hospital spokesman Lin Ho-shing (林鶴雄) said.
In the position to arbitrate between patient and hospital, the Department of Health's Bureau of Medical Affairs yesterday said that no regulations had been established to deal with videotaping in hospital rooms.
"It's impossible for the bureau to have policies for every possible situation.
"The use of cameras in patient rooms is an issue that the hospital management handles on its own," said Cheng Tsung-ming (鄭聰明), a senior official at the bureau.
However, Cheng said that any videotaping in patients' rooms should not encroach upon the privacy of hospital workers and that the hospital's facilities should not be tampered with in the process of installing video equipment.
"It's not a matter of whether the patient's room should be considered a public space. The patient-hospital relationship entails that the hospital take care of the patient, and regulations that the hospital be notified about the use of cameras on hospital premises is part of the agreement in the patient-hospital relationship.
"When the patient feels the need to put in surveillance cameras, then already there is a problem of trust," Cheng said.
Society of Law and Medicine chairman Wu Chien-liang (
The society suggested that the issue was not necessarily a legal matter.
The hospital stressed that the controversy was an isolated case and not a common occurrence. It said the camera policy was being reconsidered.
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