The Role of Nurses in Confidentiality Issues, Essay Example

Understanding the Role of Nurses in Confidentiality Issues with Patients and Breach of the Agreement

Through understanding good nursing practice, it could be realized that when it comes to distinguishing honest response from manipulated information, medical practitioners are often given the chance to mandate a sense of control on how they are able to make a distinct note on what is real and how such reality could provide a sense of indication on what is really happening with the patient. Most often than not, the reason why some patients are not willing to disclose important information about their healthcare include the shame in being possibly judged by other surrounding them. Another possibility is the fact by which they would want to protect themselves from any possible reactions from the public once their supposed personal ‘secrets’ have already been disclosed.

These information[s], when they are shared, are expected by the patients to be protected by their medical attendees. This is where the application of information –containment comes in. In medical procedures, patient-nurse confidentiality is given high regard [especially by patients who do have something to cover matters up for]. Practical measures of mandating the concept of development implicates a sense of control especially in terms of improving the ways by which a patient’s case is attended to. The healthcare attention needed by a patient and how well it is responded to would depend on how accurate the data he presents to the public are.

Question is, when could the patient-nurse confidentiality be breeched? Although this principle of ethical measures of protecting the rights of the patient to have personal preferences of medication and be given the chance to keep secrets that he finds necessary to keep, it does not tolerate instances when such secrets are already capable of endangering the lives of several numbers of individuals surrounding the patient. Such instances may include (a) the patient’s job involves close contact with other individuals which endangers them from the symptoms that are evident in the patient’s system (these job positions could include prostitution-related jobs).  (b) The patient’s condition could be passed on through a hereditary line. In this case, no matter how supposedly secretive the patient is, it would be necessary for the medical practitioner to see to it that the family members become aware of the possibility that they too are in danger or might be prone to the possibility of acquiring the same type of health problem. (c) The third scenario is more focused on the general aspects of developmental procedures by which a particular ailment could determinably redefine the [personal] connection that the patient may have with other individuals surrounding him.

These instances, as noted from the example scenarios, implicate a sense of distinction, especially in relation to how the medical practitioner views his personal and professional role of protecting the lives and the health status of the greater number of individuals in the community or at least the ones who are related to the patient. Safety and protective healthcare attendance is what constitutes the real duties of medical practitioners. Relatively, this case intends to emanate a sense of distinction on how the ethics of medical secrecy or patient-nurse confidentiality is given full attention to, especially in relation to how the emancipation of ethical considerations is applied into the process of redefining the path towards developing better options of disclosing important information shared by the patent that is necessary to be passed on to others.

Measuring the rightful application of patient-nurse confidentiality measures is highly important especially if other members of the society ought to be involved in the situation already. Protecting the right of the higher number of individuals that could be involved in the case should be the primary concern of the medical practitioners. When it comes to sharing the information to the people who could be involved, doctors and other medical practitioners should of course give warning to the patient first, at least giving him a chance to prepare as to how the individuals to whom the information would be disclosed to might react accordingly. The concept of applying deontological theory into nursing requires concentration on how the medical attendees of patients do provide close attention to how they adhere to their obligations towards their patients and their profession (Kimmelman, et al, 2009). In NBC’s ER: Betraying Trust or Providing Good Care episode, the emergence of conflict when the breach of contract on patient-nurse confidentiality was accomplished came into close-concern. Seeing how the medical practitioners handled the situation insisted on how important it is to give attention to such agreements between the nurse and patient especially in balancing out the effects of either keeping or disclosing the information presented by the patient (Appel, 2006)..

It could be understood that somehow, the concept of establishing a common point of agreement between the patient and the doctor when it comes to disclosing particular confidential and complex information is necessary, especially if the case could involve more than one individual. Disclosing as much information as needed should be measured and agreed upon by the doctor and the patient so as to avoid any possible conflicts in the future. Practically, people have become more open to the idea of protecting the ones they love especially when the issue is relatively connected to the integrity of the health conditions of the people involved in the case. With this realization, the medical practitioners could impose on the need to make sure that information disclosed to them should be clear of distinct effects on the ways by which these data would not be in any way affective of the lives of others. When dangers are seen to spur from the current situation of the patient and sharing the information to concerned individuals would be the only way of determining the possible ways of defining the determinable source of containing the situation, medical practitioners ought to take action and create an agreement with the patient as to how such situations could be dealt with accordingly.

References

Appel, JM. Must My Doctor Tell My Partner? Rethinking Confidentiality In the HIV Era, Medicine and Health Rhode Island, Jun 2006

Tassano, Fabian. The Power of Life or Death: Medical Coercion and the Euthanasia Debate. Foreword by Thomas Szasz, MD. London: Duckworth, 1995. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 1999.

Kimmelman, J.; Weijer, C; Meslin, E (2009). “Helsinki discords: FDA, ethics, and international drug trials”. The Lancet 373 (9657): 13–4.