Introduction
Ethical dilemmas exist in daily nursing practice and nurses try to address them while upholding professional and personal values and balancing their commitments to hospitals, loved ones, and colleagues in multidisciplinary teams. To demonstrate patient advocacy, nurses apply exquisite skills in making ethical decisions, providing compassionate care, and communicating courteously. PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent.Florence Nightingale discussed nurses’ ethical roles of communication, confidentiality, and centrality in providing individualized care. One of the most important ethical issues is that of maintaining patient confidentiality when a patient’s health and well-being are at risk. However, there are state laws and regulations, and ethical decision-making models such as the DECIDE model which nurses can use to analyze and solve ethical dilemmas.PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent.
Summary of Moral/ Ethical Issue In Article
The article by Jie (2015) discusses an ethical dilemma of Mr. Green, 57-year-old diagnosed with prostate cancer and a planned suicide attempt. At the time of diagnosis, he declined surgical and medical treatment over alternative treatment. As a result, the tumors metastasized aggressively and he has a poor prognosis with only 4-6 weeks to live. Mr. Green expressed his plan to commit suicide to nursing staff and requested her not to inform other staff placing the nurse in an ethical dilemma (Jie, 2015). After Mr. Green’s confinement to a nursing staff of his suicide attempt, the nurse was to make a decision between respecting the patient’s confidentiality by keeping it a secret and causing the patient to commit suicide without any intervention or violating the patient’s autonomy and informing other staff of Mr. Green’s suicide attempt and influence close monitoring, prevention, and suicide avoidance efforts.PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent.
Ethical Issue In comparison to Florida State Health Laws and Regulations
The state of Florida grants all patients the right to confidentiality where all healthcare-related information must be kept private. This information includes; personal identifying information in patient health records, communication between a patient and a psychotherapist, mental health practitioner, or psychologist (Florida, n.d).PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent. However, the state grants the release or sharing of information in situations such as; when a patient’s representative has rightful access to a patient’s records when information is needed for research or a licensed PMHNP is a defendant in disciplinary action, civil or criminal case related to a patient(Florida, n.d).PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent. It however allows the disclosure of information by a PMHNP to law enforcement officers, family members, and relevant authorities if there is an imminent risk of physical harm to a patient, other community members in constant communication with the patient (Florida, n.d). This implies that patients should believe in the oath taken by PMHNP to maintain confidence as well as confidentiality in the PMHNP-patient therapeutic relationship.PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent.
Process of Ethical Decision Making To Address This Ethical Dilemma
Decision-making, in this case, should be guided by state laws and regulations, professional ethics, and values of PMHNPs. Patient confidentiality is one of the most significant and foundational principles of practice among PMHNPs. PMHNPs are professionally and ethically obligated to safeguard patient information against breach as this can later have adverse consequences. However, there are patient-specific scenarios where PMHNPs are allowed to disclose patient information such as when there is an immediate risk of harm to a patient, member of the public, or close family member. In this case, the patient’s disclosure to commit suicide posed immediate risks to his health and well-being. In PMHPN, the principle of beneficence requires PMHNPs to act for the benefit of others while that of non-maleficence latter obliges PMHNPs to inflict no harm to patients (Haddad & Geiger, 2020). PMH Nurse Practitioner Role I: Child and Adolescent.This implies that the appropriate decision should be that which benefits both the PMHNP and Mr. Green. Comparing the nurses’ two options; the decision to maintain the patient’s confidentiality can ultimately result in the patient committing suicide, which is an outcome that will only benefit Mr. Green based on his desire
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