Confidentiality In Nursing Essay

According to the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, nurses are expected to provide a safe, effective and ethical care to their patients in accordance with the guidelines of the Standards for Practice for Nurses and Midwives (Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct,1999).

The principle of confidentiality means not passing on personal information about the families, children or colleagues that staff work with. It also means a set of rules or a promise that limits access or places restrictions on certain types of information.

Everything in the realm of medicine deals with the topic of confidentiality. The medical definition of confidentiality is, “The right of

On April 16, 2007, America experienced its deadliest shooting by a single gunman. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, shot and killed 32 people and then turned the gun on himself (CNN). Cho had a history of mental health problems. Mental illnesses are defined as “diseases that causes mild to severe disturbances in thought and/or behavior, resulting in an inability to cope with life’s ordinary demands and routines” (Mental). Common mental health disorders include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and dementia. Some signs and warnings that show that one might have a mental illness are: social withdrawal, suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety, and trouble concentrating. Sadly, Cho

The Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA) of 1996 provides security provisions and data privacy for protecting a patient’s medical information. HIPAA has guidelines to ensure that a patient’s confidentiality is maintained while allowing the communication of a patient’s medical records between certain bodies or people or officials. Officials that a patient’s medical records can be shared with are other health care providers, health plans, business associates, and health care clearinghouses. HIPAA protects all “ individually identifiable health information”. There is a specific protocol to follow when sharing a patient’s medical information. Theses steps are imperative to maintaining the patient’s privacy.

Moral theories are theories that help us distinguish between a right or a wrong action. Adequate moral theories help us understand that what we should or shouldn’t do in certain situations. Two of the most famous moral theories are Utilitarianism and Kantianism. According to Utilitarianism, an action is right if only if it out of all the other action gives out the maximum utility. In oppose to that, Kantianism says that an action is right if and only if, in performing that action, the person does not treat anyone as a mean and treats everyone as an end in itself.

Answer: Privacy and Confidentiality and Fidelity. The nurse must maintain privacy and confidentiality involves only sharing patient information on a need-to-know basis. Actions in healthcare delivery are structured and governed by HIPPA law. The nurse must act to prevent breaches of confidentiality. For example, the supervisor did not agree to allow two students in the room with the doctor in other to ensure privacy and confidentiality.

Its main ideology is to protect the health and safety of the health consumers. Nursing Council 2012 guides all health practitioners to treat every health consumer with respect, dignity and maintain their privacy and confidentiality. It is essential for nurses to adopt health consumers’ culture, ethical and moral values without imposing their own. A balanced power relationship is necessary to meet the best needs of health consumers. While undertaking the nursing process, they have the privilege to access the health consumers’ personal information. It is the responsibility of nurses to keep it confidential or disclose only the relevant information when required by law or if the person is at risk or a child is involved. It incorporates the fact that the nurses should not be taking advantage of the vulnerable health consumers such as children, older, frail and mentally ill people. It is the duty of nurses to encourage the health consumers to advocate for themselves when they are not happy about the care being delivered. It is also the duty of the nurses to create awareness about the professional relationship of health consumers with health practitioners. It guides nurses, not to get over-involved in therapeutic relationship, control emotions and reduce negligence. In case of a nurse dealing with his/her family members or relatives, the care needs to be transferred to another nurse

Being truthful and not withholding information from patients can be found in the ANA code of ethics provision two. This code implies that nurses have an obligation to put the patient first. This code recognizes patient’s rights, including their right to know and their right to have a discussion about their health status so that they can make healthcare decisions. The ethical principal relating to being truthful and not withholding information from the patient can also be found within beneficence (act of doing good), justice, truth telling, and promise keeping (Fowler,

First and foremost, our patients must always be provided with a high level of privacy. Privacy allows our patients to feel comfortable coming to our healthcare facility and not have to worry about their confidential medical information getting released to anyone from the outside. In order to keep the high level of privacy that we must uphold, we must always follow the strict guidelines of HIPAA and the Privacy Act and keep all of our patient’s information extremely confidential, so it allows the patient to feel at ease when they come to us to be treated. For example, if someone gets tested for a sexually

On any given shift, nurses have access to some of the most personal private information about a patient and his or her family. A right to privacy is grounded in the society and is protected by the United States Constitution. In addition, the American Nurses Association (ANA) Codes for Nurses prohibits disclosure of confidential patient information, as do the ethical codes of many other professional organizations (Malek, 2010). The Joint Commission mandates that institutions maintain and adhere to policies and standards to protect patient information. According to Malek (2010), nurses must remember that a right to privacy protects more than the patient’s medical record; it protects them from unauthorized photographs and news stories, as well

The role that I played in the group was a patient who has a mental health disorder and I didn’t want his mother to know about the illness, as a front it seemed as though we had a close relationship. When my mother leaves the room I asked the nurse to keep my illness confidential as she does not really understand it. As a group we all decided that it is best for the patient’s notes to be filed in the nurse’s station due to issues surrounding confidentiality and privacy. As a group we chose to show a clinical scenario which started off with a role play and ended with a debrief discussion which also incorporated the Australian nursing and midwifery code of ethics (2008) and the competency standards for registered nurses which explained where an ethical breach had been made.

I would be sure to tell Ms. Morry that I understand her concern about having her problems made public, but would also assure her that all calls and information are kept extremely confidential.

Confidentiality in the healthcare field is a patient’s vital and mandatory entitlement to the distribution of their medical records. This right is otherwise regarded as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which pronounces the protection of patients in several aspects such as healthcare accessibility, the prevention of healthcare fraud, etc. Due to the law’s commitment to protecting the consumer, it is absolutely essential for the medical profession to become fully aware of the HIPAA law and its policies. The ideology of confidentiality and the HIPAA law possess several issues, including the progression of the concept, confidentiality in minors, and the consequences of disregarding the legislation.

Discuss the basis of the duty of confidentiality and its application to the adolescent client.