Confidentiality In Midwifery

Throughout I will maintain all individuals who were involved confidentiality in accordance with Nursing And Midwifery Council; the code of conduct (NMC,2010) states that all practitioners must respect people’s right to confidentiality

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.

Being a midwife does not only defined by assisting women in childbirth. The general dictionary definition are the misconception of how people view midwives. Being a midwife means to be ‘with women’ and this leads the construction of the midwifery philosophy, Page (2006) 5 steps and Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) competency standards, in order to provide the best women centred care (Australia Collage of Midwives, 2017). This essay will cover a constructive overview of what Page (2006) 5 steps of being a midwife means, it will also defined what women centred care is and emphasis on the importance it has for the woman. Understanding Page (2006) 5 steps and women centred care helped build the pathway for midwifery philosophy to correlate with NMBA competency standard in order to support midwifery practice. For

This essay will explore why consent and confidentiallity is important in midwifery practice. It will look into why it is needed and what can happen if these aspects are breeched in anyway. The National Health service was founded in 1948, this brought free healthcare to everyone. In 1902 the Midwives act becomes a law and midwifery became an established profession, fast forward to 2004 the midwives rules and standards are published and then amended in 2012 and in 2008 the code of conduct was brought into practice. These publications are legal documents in which all nurse and midwives must abide by. In these documents there are clear rules that surround both consent and confidentiality (NHS Choices 2014)

The Australian College of Midwives believes that it is the right of every pregnant woman to have access to continuity of care by a known midwife for her pregnancy, labour and early postnatal period. Midwives are the most appropriate primary care providers for healthy mothers and newborn babies and are able to refer to specialist medical care if the need arises (Hicks, Spurgeon & Barwell, 2003). Midwives must work within the competency standards enforced by The ANMC Australian Nursing & Midwifery Council (2006) in order to obtain and practice as a registered midwife in Australia. Competency 4 states Midwives should “promote safe and effective practice” (ANMC, 2006), this is achievable by providing Midwifery continuity of care to women and

Confidentiality is critical for nursing professional to understand and undertake. If a nurse did not keep a

Disclosing confidential patient information without patient consent can happen in the health care field quite often and is the basis for many cases brought against health care facilities. There are many ways confidential information gets into the wrong hands and this paper explores some of those ways and how that can be prevented.

I intend to look at why confidentiality is so important within healthcare and how it relates to the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) Code. I will look at the

This report will evaluate the roles and responsibilities of a midwife. “Midwifery encompasses care of women during pregnancy, labour, and the postpartum period, as well as care of the new-born.”(WHO, 2015) This is a recent definition and clearly points out that a midwife has many roles and responsibilities. The NMC Codes of Conduct will be evaluated with specific emphasis on recent changes within healthcare. These changes took place as a result of the tragedies at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital in 2005-2009 and are the outcome of the Francis report in order to improve care given to patients.

This assignment tries to explain the role Nursing and Midwifery Council plays in safeguarding the public and maintaining standard care within the UK. Establishing and maintaining standard rules and regulation and legislations which are there to safeguard people. In order to do that, the author will discuss how the MNC seeks to safeguarding the patients specifically restricting discussing on mental health by regulating mental health nursing. Key terminologies such as regulation and Mental Health Nursing, confidentiality, advocacy, person centered care, fitness to practice, accountability and whistleblowing will be considered and at the same time stating their significance in nursing profession. Furthermore the Author will briefly outline the responsibilities of the NMC and the code of practice. It will then look at by the Mental Health user’s duty to maintain confidentiality and what happen to a care worker if they break confidentiality. The author will then consider if the NMC has properly seek to protect the public or not and said which areas do they need to improve.

As a legal and professional obligation the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2015) stipulate that all service users must have their confidentiality protected, therefore, the service user in this case study will be given the pseudonym of John.

The main focus of the article is to look at the absolute value of patients’ confidentiality. Blightman et al. look at the pros and cones of breaking patient’s confidentiality and conclude that a breached of confidentiality is in order when it is necessary to obtain consent, as required by law, or when it is in the best interest of the public. The article is useful to my subject, since it examines in details the main issues involving the safeguard of patients’ information. In addition, the authors define confidential information, looks at breaching confidentiality for consent, audits, protection of children, disclosure to family and friends, statutory disclosure, prevention of crime, public interest, public safety, public health, and disclosure to the media. The paper publication is Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care & Pain, which s a joint publication of the British Journal of Anaesthesia and The Royal College of Anaesthetists in the UK. It is also the official journal of The Faculty of Pain Medicine and The College of Anaesthetists of Ireland. Publication in such an esteemed journal requires utterly scrutinized of reliability and credibility of the information provided. I found the article educational and thorough in its coverage of aspects of breach of patient information. It is also well written and easy to understand.

As an individual’s ethics will play a large part in their practice, there are specific guidelines and legislation that exist to ensure that nurses, as well as other health professionals, practice in a way that is ethical (Avery, 2013). These laws further exists to attempt to simplify the ethical issues that sometimes present in nursing practice and to attempt to guide one’s actions. The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) provides guidance to nurses by providing a number of professional codes and guidelines (Avery, 2013). The NMBA has developed a code of ethics for nurses comprising of eight codes (Avery, 2013). These are as follows; 1) Nurses value quality nursing care for all people; 2) Nurses value respect and kindness for self and others;

NMC (2008) The Code: Standards of conduct, performance and ethics for nurses and midwives. London: Nursing and Midwifery Council

Woman-centred care requires a holistic approach and should encompass all a woman’s expectations from an emotional, physical, spiritual and cultural perspective (Fahy K 2012 & Australian College of Midwives (ACM) 2016). I believe that woman-centred care is of utmost importance in all aspects of midwifery care, and I am sure that many others in the profession would share my opinion. Simple principals of woman-centred care include but are not limited to: collaborative care between health professionals, continuity of care provider, care focused on the woman’s needs and expectations before those of the institution or health professionals and ensures the woman’s autonomy and ability to make informed decisions is supported and respected (Fahy K 2012 & ACM 2016). Unfortunately in some situations, woman-centred care is not always successfully implemented. A common example is when there is an indication for Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM), particularly in the intrapartum period