This research paper will focus on ethical issues of privacy, terminal illness, human rights, living wills, making living wills mandatory for medicare, social worker's involvement, autonomy, the family role, termination of life support, and the right to die.
There exists an ethical and legal requirement to protect patient information and home care records, and home healthcare nurses have this responsibility along with health care institutions. Privacy and confidentiality are separate entities, and the protection of one does not necessarily mean the protection of the other. The right to privacy is embodied in the law. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution prevent state and federal agencies from invading an individual's privacy:
As the right continued to develop, the right to be left alone became defined as an individual's protection from unreasonable intrusions into his or her private affairs: in other words, the right to keep personal information from others (Brent, 1997, 256).
Home health care concerns with regard to privacy include the use of a patient's likeness or name for economic advantage without patient consent (for example, taking a photograph of the patient for use in a promotional brochure), and public disclosure of private facts about the patient (such as disclosure of a diagnosis), each without the patient's consent (Brent, 1997, 256).
Privacy is a right covering each individual, while confidentiality is more limited and covers certain people in certain relationships. Healthcare provider-patient relationships require that information shared between provider and patient remain confidential. Confidential information is not to be shared with anyone not directly involved in the care and treatment of the patient. For certain patients, such as AIDS victims, state and federal laws provide added confidentiality protection based on the belief that disclosure in such a case would cause additiona...