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Privacy and Confidentiality

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CHAPTER ONE
Background to the Study
In the rapidly changing system of health care, many different factors have affected and changed the perception about how health care is practiced today. The rights of patient are also affected. Patient rights have now become the center of attention in practice of medicine. Today, concerns about patients’ choice and the respect for their preferences, values and the access to medical care are getting more complex. The patients’ expectations are becoming higher and now they always want everything best (Rafique & Bhatti, 2014).
Nurses are subject to numerous ethical and legal duties in their professional role, including the imperative to maintain patients’ privacy and confidentiality. Beginning in 1893, nurses take the Nightingale Pledge “I promise to do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling” (Gretter, 2012).
The duty continues today, with hospital policies, state regulations, and federal law aimed at protecting patients’ confidentiality. Critical care providers are often privy to confidential information in the course of clinical practice. The dilemma may arise when confidential information is requested by family members or friends of the patient. Although at times it seems that regulations and laws are so stringent that any disclosure of health care information is forbidden, it may be necessary and appropriate to make disclosures, and the current regulations and laws support the professional judgment in communicating patients’ health information (Wielawski, 2009).
Privacy is limited access to a person, the person’s body, conversations, bodily functions or objects immediately associated with the person. Because people have different beliefs and values about

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