Running head: ETHICAL ISSUES FACING HEALTHCARE TODAY
Ethical Issues Facing Healthcare Today
University of Phoenix
Ethical Issues Facing Healthcare Today
Several issues face the administration of health care systems in today’s clinical arena. Healthcare workers try to provide quality care to their patients and they need to be very aware of the very basic principles in health care and that starts with confidentiality. Providing patient privacy and confidentiality are essential to promoting a bond between patients and his or her practitioner’s as well as preserving the patient’s dignity (Edge & Grove, 2007). On occasion, patient confidentiality and privacy are broken and the patient’s information accessed without consent. The ethical dilemma of confidential information regarding patients being accessed by unnecessary employee’s of a local health care system and used for personal reasons as well as those that are affected by this breach in confidentiality will be explored in this paper. A proposed solution to this issue and how the administration of this health care system handled a previous similar situation, will also be identified.
Breaching patient confidentiality is an ethical dilemma that invades a patient’s right to privacy and this happened at a health care facility near me in March 2008. The Governor was a patient at this facility and many people violated her right to privacy by gathering her personal information for his or her own use. The health care facility does routine audits of the computer system and found multiple violations of the Governors confidentiality. The state law requires notification of the Department of Community Health and making them aware of the discipline regarding these employees (Smith, 2008). The health care system went through and fired every one of these employees whom had violated the Governors privacy. The health care system issued a statement to the media that they take the public’s...