Ethical Framework Simarjeet Bassi Grand Canyon University September 22, 2013

In the medical world, there is a special relationship between the patient and nurse, in which information given by the patient will not be shared with other person who is not directly involved in the patient’s care, because all patients have e right to privacy in the health care system. Yet, ethical dilemmas often arise as what has been mentioned in “Bioethics on NBC's ER: Betraying Trust or Providing Good Care? When Is It Ok to Break Confidentiality”. Physician and nurse’s ethical duty to maintain client’s confidentiality help the patient to provide the all information about their disease to the physician so if the nurse and physician will try to break confidentiality and patient will not trust on nurses and other health care person. So all health care workers should maintain the confidentiality through never discussing client issue, medical problem and health care information with others without the patient’s consent (includes family members or friends of the client). On other hand the ethical theories also help the nurse for good understanding about to protect the patient’s confidentiality. Ethical theories are the foundation of ethical analysis because it provide the direction to make a good decision and right path to make opinion. It help to solve the dilemma and help to known about the weakness and strength of each. On other hand ethical theories helps the health care worker at that case when patient’s privacy not protected by anyone. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) describe how personal health information (PHI) may be used released or not and how the client can obtain access to the information. For example in some court case the patient medical information need to be released. On other hand protecting the patient’s medical record help to maintain confidentiality, so when client’s medical information is released without the permission of the patient it is a breach of confidentiality and patient cannot make a trust on physician and nurses, because when patient came in the hospital then he make a trust full relationship with the health care team and provide there whole information to the physician and nurses and think that there information is secure. Nurses has a legal right to maintain client’s information secure and secrete so according to the health agencies and nursing practice act it is against the law.
My personal position on patients’ privacy rights is similar to a utilitarianism view. Utilitarian ethical theory is founded on the ability to predict the consequence of an action and choice that has the greatest benefit for that people who has the ethically correct choice. Every person makes a decision based on the action which is right thing. In medical profession there are so many situation which is faced by the nurse when making a decision about the patient and get the better outcome to all decision.
Within the case, Nurse Hathaway must choose between alerting the patients’ parents and community about the sex parties and outbreak of HPV or keep the confidentiality between herself and the patients. So when maintain confidentiality that protect the nurse legally and ethically fulfill her role as a nurse, on other hand if the nurse breaking it ethically and legally then the parents and the community has the right to know. There is a difficult ethical dilemma happen. According to my personal view at this issue Hathaway Nurse should clarify everything to the parent and the community. Hathaway