Caregiver company apologizes after staff exposes patient’s identity on TikTok live

SINGAPORE: After a woman took to social media to say that a healthcare staff from Aseana Caregivers Pte Ltd Singapore had exposed the identities of a patient on TikTok live, the company quickly apologized. It also said it was taking immediate action and that the TikTok account of the staff involved had been removed.

On the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook group page on Wednesday (Dec 18), a woman named Hus Farrah called on Aseana Caregivers, the Singapore Nursing Board (SNB), the Ministry of Manpower, and the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority to look into the matter of the staff member who had live-streamed a medical procedure on TikTok, ending up exposing a patient’s identity without their consent.

She asked the authorities to take immediate action and to also make sure to put measures in place to prevent similar incidents from occurring.

“This severe breach of patient confidentiality and trust is unacceptable and can cause irreparable harm to the patients and their loved ones,” Ms Farrah wrote. She added that even more alarmingly, the patient’s identification numbers and medication information could be heard being shared online.

Ms Farrah posted two screenshots of the staffer doing such a live stream, wherein commenters asked her what she was doing and told her that she was not supposed to be exposing the patient in this manner. The post author also wrote that it could also be heard that the patient was “in severe pain during the procedure,” which made the healthcare worker’s breach “even more distressing.”

She characterised the staffer’s wrongdoing as “a gross violation of patient privacy and confidentiality” and called others to unite in protecting patients’ rights and dignity.

Her post went on to be widely shared and commented on, with commenters sharing Ms Farrah’s concerns and sentiments and endeavoring to tag the social media accounts of pertinent authorities to draw attention to the healthcare worker’s misdeeds.

A few hours after Ms Farrah’s post was published on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE page, Aseana Caregivers Pte Ltd Singapore responded, thanking the post author for bringing this matter to the company’s attention.

“We take patient confidentiality very seriously and have taken immediate action to address the situation. We are currently reviewing our internal policies and procedures to strengthen our commitment to patient confidentiality and privacy,” it added, also apologizing for any distress or concern that the incident caused.

The company also said that the healthcare worker’s account had been taken down, sharing a link to TikTok to prove this. /TISG

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