A nurse friend of mine was fired for a ? hipaa violation. Her supervisor readmitted a patient to the long term care independent section from the nursing section and took the patients word that there were no med. changes when in fact there were. She had a prn nurse do the chart paperwork review portion of the readmission while she did the patient assessment. My friend caught the errors over a weekend when the supervisor was not working, wrote the supervisor a note regarding the missed med changes listing the specific patient and the med changes, and updated the med record and notified pharmacy of the appropriate changes. The supervisor later retaliated against the nurse and the nurse was written up due to an unrelated, very petty event. In my friends grievance letter to the head of HR, the administrator of the facility and the director of nursing she placed a copy of the note and cited her supervisor's errors. The specific patients last name and the medications involved were cited in the note. She was then fired. Was this a hipaa violation even though it was reporting an unsafe practice, which she felt she was being retaliated against for, to her superiors in a private fashion.