Applying Ethical Framework in Practice Essay

Nursing is a career that is governed by a set of ethical principles. The duties of a nurse consist of care and support and its important that nurses are aware of their professional ethics. These principles are put into place to uphold and maintain moral values in healthcare. The American Nurses Association (ANA) code of ethics for nurses consists of nine provisions, outlined in the Code of Ethics for nurses with Interpretive Statements. These provisions are constructed to blueprint the role and responsibilities of a nurse. The chosen provisions being discussed will refer to the three main principles of patient autonomy, patient confidentiality, and patient rights.

Confidentiality is a concept of vast importance for professionals in the medical field. It is a professional obligation in this field and is considered to be an ethical concept that falls in line with integrity, compassion, veracity, charity, and fidelity as explained in both the International Council of Nurses Code for Nurses (1973) and the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics (1985). However, in today’s ever growing world of technology and demand for information, challenges continue to arise that force doctors and nurses to reexamine virtues such as confidentiality.

The importance of ethical theory plays a large role in nursing practices. It is often difficult to understand where the lines of confidentiality should be drawn, so in order to help decipher the feelings nurse practitioners have of what they consider to be fair or unfair, there are a number of ethical theories that can be used in order to

The ANMC (2010, pp.6) state on the topic of confidentiality, that nurses must insure the information obtained in a professional setting remain private and that information received is not used by nurses to give them an advantage or power in any way. Education in the matter is one solution to guarantee the boundaries and to keep a professional position. These breaches can be classified as boundary crossings, boundary violations or sexual misconduct and can lead to violations of a nurse’s professional responsibility causing consequences to occur.

As healthcare providers, maintaining a patient’s confidentiality, human dignity and privacy is expected at all times. Nurses are faced with maintaining patient confidentiality on a daily basis. The Coded of Ethics for Nurses is the framework of nonnegotiable ethical standards and obligations that all nurses are to uphold. Nurses are to be accountable for their actions and are expected to advocate and strive to protect the rights, health and safety of patients (American Nurses Association, 2011).

With the utilization of the Act-utilitarianism mindset, an alternative plan of action to focus on the circumstances surrounding Andrea and the community at large can be established using Uustals ethical decision making model. The nine steps identified by Uustal can allow the nursing process to be applied in an effort to guide the nurse in practicing proper judgment. The quandary involves community, personal and patient dilemmas. While many nurses strive for adhesion to values of patient autonomy and keeping ones word, the very nature of health care can raise cause for nurses to contradict and deviate from their own ethical stand points, all in an effort to do the right thing. Due to Andrea’s development of cervical cancer, nurse Hathaway was right in disclosing the minor’s disease to her parents. Adolescents usually are covered by their family’s insurance, but they may not have coverage for unaccompanied care, and they may

Baillie and Black (2015. p27) stated that in practice, confidentiality is a legal obligation derived from statute law and case law and it will also usually be included in the contract of employment as a nurse, with a specific link to disciplinary procedures if breached. Although it is important that a nurse makes sure that the information they share is legitimate, this is not absolute as there are a number of exceptions. The Data Protection Act(1998) states that a nurse must inform the patient of the circumstances under which their information will be shared and that this is necessary in order for the best treatment to be given. According to the NMC(2010), all nurses must respect individual rights to confidentiality and keep information secure and confidential in accordance with the law and relevant ethical and regulatory frameworks, taking account of local protocols. They must also actively share personal data with others when interest of safety and protection override the need for confidentiality.

Privacy is one of the fundamental policies and principles that should be adhered to by each professional nurse (Cileska, 2001). In addition, confidentiality is another equally important principle that should be observed by each of the nurses in the nursing profession. The reason for emphasising on confidentiality and privacy is meant to preserve the nursing ethics and to protect the privacy of the patients (Dickenson, 2004). Since most of the diseases are not meant to be exposed to the public, it should be the responsibility of each nurse to ensure that all patient information remains private and confidential this gives hope and trust to the

Nurses are subject to a plethora of legal, ethical, and professional duties which can be very challenging on a day to day basis. Some of these duties include respecting a patient 's confidentiality and autonomy, and to recognize the duty of care that is owed to all patients. As nurses our duties are always professional; however there are legal implications if these duties are breached. We also must consider when it is okay as nurses to breach these duties and therefore ethical issues arise. As nurses one of our main priorities is to advocate for our patients, without our own personal feelings on the matter taking over.

This essay will discuss why confidentiality is important within nursing practice and the reasons why a registered nurse and student nurse are accountable and to whom they are accountable to in relation to patient care. It will further discuss patient’s rights in relation to law.

After that, safeguarding the patients’ privacy must be implemented with the nursing department. Every day, nurses hear and work with protected health information (PHI). Sometimes, it comes to the point of comfortability that they forget the importance of keeping patient information confidential. Therefore, it is a good practice that Sue and the compliance officer remind the nursing department of recognizing and protecting the private rights of their patient. The good practices would be not discussing patients’ information in public areas where others can hear the discussion. For Sue and other non-clinical staffs, they should be trained on understanding their scoop of practices. They should ask themselves a question all the times : “do I need to access the PHI that I am looking at to finish my duties?” If the answer is no, then they have to stop digging deeper for unnecessary information. Also, any incident involving PHI has to be officially reported. That would help the organization determine following actions needed to prevent the incident from occurring

Once a patient’s information is disclosed to any person or to an authority without person’s consent, it matters with the reputation of the whole organization or the institute. There are also certain situations where we could breach patient confidentiality under some procedures. (It will be discussed in

In connection with the Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct (2015) which states that people’s right to confidentiality must be respected at all times. It is essential that in this report all

Other concerns are conversations within the hospital cafeterias/lobbies about patients and their families, and employees sharing information throughout the hallways without a “need to know.” Once employees discover their colleagues looking at patient information without a “need to know basis,” and, other wrong doings according to the agency’s standards, their own sense of what is right and wrong instantly comes into question. Reporting the unethical behavior, the employee who had discovered the violations of patient rights is presented with a number of difficult choices. The legal basis for imposing liability for a breach of confidentiality is more extensive than ethical guidelines, which dictate the morally right thing to do.

Confidentiality is one of the main duties of health care providers. They are required to keep information about patient’s health private unless the patient give permission to release his/her health information (De Bord et al, 2013). Dilemmas in patient’s confidentiality may arise when there is disagreement between confidentiality and other ethical principles such as avoiding harm to the patient or others.