Privacy and Confidentiality of Patients Information - Case Study Example

? Privacy and Confidentiality of Patient’s Information Privacy and Confidentiality of Patient’s Information Introduction Safeguardingprivacy and confidentiality of the patient’s health records is the crucial aspect of the whole healthcare system. During the evaluation of cases and subsequent management of case activities, nurses and other healthcare staff get an access to the client’s confidential information such as their medical condition, family, and financial reports. Since the confidential information handling is the daily routine for nurses and physicians, it is paramount for the healthcare staff to preserve and safeguard all the secrets included in those records at all times based on the state, institutional, and federal laws and requirements. Therefore, the healthcare staff, such as nurses and physicians, has ethical and legal duties to observe confidentiality and privacy of the health information and records of their patients. The discussion will investigate and put together the information that should be provided to new health care employees about their patients’ privacy and confidentiality rights. Discussion Privacy and confidentiality are terms often interchanged in the usage. However, the two are not similar concepts; for instance, privacy is the right to regulate a person’s access, and involves some physical privacy, e.g., not revealing or disclosing certain information to others during physical checkups of a client. Similarly privacy concerns the information about a person. The privacy laws of information dictate the personal information to be handled via enforceable principles of privacy. Confidentiality deals only with the information of the client (Chapman, 2007). The legal confidentiality duty obliges healthcare physicians to safeguard their clients against unnecessary or illegal revealing of the patient’s health information. A healthcare system code of medical association ethics code makes nurses protect and maintain the confidentiality. Nurses can keep boundaries and create nurse-patient relationships depending on the trust by honouring their patient’s rights based on privacy and confidentiality rules. It is crucial to maintain both confidentiality and privacy of patients since most clients worry about stigma and discrimination connected with their HIV/AIDs and other related illnesses. Patients also need to know and control the person with an access to their vital health information. It is very important because patients tend to seek medical care and disclose their complete and honest accounts of their signs and symptoms if they feel free, appreciated, and secure. Similarly, a medical care institution with firm privacy strategies will foster public trust and confidence in general healthcare services (Anderson & Goodman, 2002). The main reason why doctors need to maintain their ethical responsibility of patient’s confidentiality is to enable the clients to feel comfortable to make a complete and open disclosure of their health information to the doctor being sure that the doctor will safeguard the privacy and confidential nature of the information revealed. The complete disclosure allows the doctors to diagnose the illness accurately and treat their clients better. In return for the frankness of the clients, mainly the doctors should avoid disclosing the confidential information without the consent of the client unless mandated to do so by law. The behavior and conduct code of nurses or other medical practitioners is guided by the Privacy Act that comprises various national principles of privacy governing minimum standards of privacy for handling patient information (Lawrence, 2012). They include the importance of gaining the patient’s consent for health information collection, what to tell a patient when the information is gathered, crucial considerations before disclosing the patient’s information to other people, and what crucial details must be included in a privacy policy of a health provider. Privacy Act principles also include guidelines of protecting and storing health information and providing people with a right to access their personal health information and records. When gathering health information, physicians and nurses should only gather health information of a patient with their consent (Standards Association of Australia, 2008). During the consultation stage, the patient should understand what information is being gathered and why. Additionally, nurses should ensure thorough and accurate records keeping to allow the client treatment to go on effectively; and in case of any conflict, the records may serve as a defense means against the involved physician. According to HIPAA (2005), physicians and nurses should inform their patients of how their information will be utilized. Patients will not consent or agree their information to be used if they do not understand how the information will be utilized and for what reasons. Whenever it is possible clients should be advised to provide their information during the gathering process, which can be done via the usual communication at the consultation stage (Harman, 2006). This concerns also the cases when crucial information of clients cannot be revealed. Various laws are applied to security and information storage, for instance, health care systems should implement or enact procedures to allow an access to patients’ information only to the authorized people (who have the right to use the information) or reveal the information with the objective which it was gathered for (Van, 2009). Health care systems should also have security measures to prevent an unlawful or illegal access to patients’ records and where it is possible to process the information storage in a manner that the person’s identity is not visible from the record’s face. Electronic records pose critical problems to the confidential information when storing and securing records. Although they provide an increased convenience of data retrieval and transferring, the systems also impose increased risks of information leakage, an access by people who are not authorized, and browsing by the not authorized staff (Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2011). Therefore, healthcare systems and institutions must consider the security of the storage and transferring of the information and prevent the staff from gaining an access to the unauthorized electronic data. The function of the healthcare personnel is to collect and share crucial patient’s details to ensure optimum health care delivery. Therefore, all the information transfer without the client’s knowledge requires careful considerations (Steen, Childress, & Childress, 1997). Staff in group practices needs to formulate effective internal communication strategies to be able to comply with the principles of privacy such as test results communication and issues of contact tracing. The personnel should know their responsibilities and duties and ensure that systems protect clients’ privacy effectively. Protection of the clients’ confidentiality is bound to some exceptions, which are ethically accepted due to overwhelming social factors (Health Care Systems, Inc., 2008). This may be the cases when there are serious risks to the client or another individual, law obligations or other obliging interests of the society. For instance, in case of a reasonable possibility that a client will cause an adverse bodily harm to another individual, a doctor should take precautions, safeguard the potential victim, and inform law authorities. Therefore, the doctor’s confidentiality duty sometimes must give a way to social interests. Conclusion Clients’ records are critical and should be protected and secured. Breaching confidentiality implies revealing a person’s information to another person without the client’s consent or an order from the authorities. Breaching of confidential and private information without an appropriate permission may cause serious problems and disciplinary measures may be applied to the staff that does not respect and protect their clients’ medical information. References Anderson, J. G., & Goodman, K. W. (2002). Ethics and information technology: A case-based approach to a health care system in transition. New York: Springer. Chapman, A. R. (2007). Health care and information ethics: Protecting fundamental human rights. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward. Health Care Systems, Inc. (2008). Protecting the confidentiality of patient information in a rapidly changing health care system: Summary of a national conference. Washington, DC: Health Systems Research, Inc. HIPAA health: The privacy rule and healthcare practice (2005). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Health. Harman, L. B. (2006). Ethical challenges in the management of health information. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Lawrence, W. W. (2012). Privacy, confidentiality, and health research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Memorial University of Newfoundland (2011). Technology choices and privacy policy in health care. St. John's, N.L.: Memorial University of Newfoundland. Steen, E. B., Childress, J. F., & Childress, M. D. (1997). Privacy and confidentiality in computer medical records. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia School of Medicine. Standards Association of Australia (2008). Health care standards - confidentiality and security. Homebush, N.S.W. : Standards Australia. Van, S. G. M. (2009). Communication skills for the health care professional: Concepts, practice, and evidence. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Read More