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Ethics of Confidentiality

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Ethical decision making in healthcare NRS-437V
Jyoti Battar
Grand Canyon University
February 2nd, 2014 Breaking confidentiality is never ethical and is also losing faith between the patient-nurse relationships or amongst healthcare providers. The minute a patient walks into a health care setting they feel a trusting bond with the providers and expect reciprocation. The U.S. department of health and human services has the office of civil rights which imposes the “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” (HIPAA) which protects patient information. Breaches of confidentiality are taken seriously by the office of civil rights and any breach of unsecured health information will be analyzed, and the person responsible will be prosecuted.
All healthcare providers are expected to follow basic ethical principles during their practice and they are: “Respect for autonomy, Veracity, Beneficence, Non-maleficence, Fidelity, and Justice” (Maurer & Smith, 2013). These ethical principles are implemented and mandated through standards of practice and federal law in all healthcare and professional organizations. According to the American Nurses Association’s (ANA) standard of codes, the most important ethical principle is “respect for the inherent dignity and worth… of human existence and the individuality of all persons” (Maurer & Smith, pg. 12). When a patient arrives to the hospital the first task the patient goes through is to sign an informed consent form, also known as advanced directive which is done for confidentiality purposes. On Feb 24, 2000 in a television episode of ER, relayed on NBC, a nurse, Nurse Hathaway, became aware of a 14 year old with a sexually transmitting disease presented at the ER. Prior to finding out of the severity of the patient’s disease, a promise was made to said patient prohibiting her from disclosing any information of the

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