The healthcare sector is responsible for providing healthcare services to patients through treatment and caregiving. The problems are personal and call for secrecy, privacy and a standard way of handling them. Therefore, privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism are essential while handling healthcare cases, and this is stipulated in the standard code of ethics. Also, there is the legal demand for medical practitioners to maintain privacy with concomitant arbitrary actions in case of violations. Notably, privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism serve to protect patients’ interests by maintaining the integrity of data and information, appreciating their values, and enabling a healthy and reliable working environment for physicians, nurses and a trustable environment for patients. Thus, an analysis of the importance of healthcare privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism is of essence to guarantee patient satisfaction and safety.
History and Statistics
The terms privacy and confidentiality have been used interchangeably over a long period to imply a singular connotation. Privacy found its roots from the Latin word private, which refers to an opportunity in one's favor. Notably, the term privacy referred to secrecy issues in the 1590s. In the 1600s, it was termed as isolation and after that denoted as the restriction on freedom in 1814 (Demirsoy & Kirimlioglu, 2016). Harris, a scientific researcher, surveyed in 1993 and showed that 27% of Americans were not satisfied with the privacy of medical information believing that the information was improperly released (Gostin, Levit, & Nass, 2009). Thus, there was a need to enact a more efficient and effective body to attend to the issue of privacy.
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Moreover, confidentiality in medicine as far as the patient’s information is concerned emanates from the Hippocratic Oath to the code of medical ethics that evolved to form the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. The Hippocratic Oath calls for health practitioners to protect patient’s privacy and confidentiality. Nurses also have a code of ethics, the Nightingale Pledge, where they pledge to do all in their power to hold in confidence patients’ personal matters. HIPAA was devised in American legislation rights for the healthcare sector, and it is responsible for safeguarding the data confidentiality of patients (Kayaalp, 2018). In 1999, a survey was done in America to determine consumer attitudes as far as health privacy was concerned. Seventy-five percent of individuals had significant concerns on matters regarding privacy and confidentiality of patient medical records. Subsequently, t he introduction of information communication technology (ICT) changes has enhanced how patient information is managed and disseminated.
Significance to Health Issues
Maintaining privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism in the healthcare setting enables high standards of ensuring the integrity of a patient’s data and information. The ethical standards of any healthcare setting are determined by how information is professionally managed. To achieve this, data and information should pass through the necessary channels to maintain the sanity of information to relevant parties. Besides, maintaining privacy and confidentiality in healthcare protects the individual's interests and guards their personal life. The patient develops a sense of willingness to make self-disclosures. For example, privacy and confidentiality are essential for teenagers who often experience complications like reproductive health matters and scenarios of drug abuse.
Furthermore, the values of integrity in any given healthcare setting are defined by the degree of handling the professional issues with the inclusion of confidentiality and privacy of the patients’ data. This implies that professionalism, privacy, and secrecy in the healthcare system are significant in upholding the integrity of information regarded as quality service delivery. Moreover, ensuring professionalism, privacy, and secrecy increases the trust of patients. When patients learn that their information is kept secret, they become more cooperative in giving information about their illness and conditions. The provision of adequate information by patients helps professionals to handle the situation well through the accurate prescription of drugs. Furthermore, adhering to confidentiality enables medical professions to be respected in society due to their ethical behavior.
Role of Nurses
Nurses inquire and collect relevant information from patients and their relatives about their illness and elaborate the same to the doctor. Therefore, they serve as a link between patients and the healthcare system. The Nightingale Pledge binds them to abide by a patient’s privacy while conducting their duties. This ensures that the stored data and information is secured by avoiding the breach to their contract. The ability to instill confidence in patients and to provide the relevant information required for diagnosis is vital. This can be accomplished by ensuring that data from patients is not leaked to anybody. This usually applies to painful diseases or conditions like HIV/AIDS, which people feel stigmatized once noticed by society. In doing this, nurses are expected to undertake each aspect professionally and avoid the mix up of documents, which may expose the private and confidential medical information of one group of patients to the other (Farnan et al., 2013). Nurses are, therefore, responsible for devising an appropriate system to handle the patient’s records.
Relevance to Nursing
Nurses are responsible for providing first care treatment to all patients. Therefore, they encounter sensitive conditions that call for privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism. Furthermore, nurses are tasked with communicating with clients implying that they are of relevance in delivering professional services to patients (Farnan et al., 2013). Thus, there is a need for honesty and transparency that nurses ought to portray. Similarly, nurses have access to medical reports, data and additional sensitive information, hence, they are mandated to keep privacy and confidentiality. Additionally, automated information systems pose a challenge to the security of data. Information might leak if not well encrypted with passwords. Thus, hackers may also pose a threat to the patient’s stored data. They might want to use it for mischievous reasons to gain without the consent of the patient or healthcare organization. Hence, there is the need for nurses to pioneer proper data safety in their organizations.
Conclusion
Privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism in healthcare have been embraced ever since the 14th century. Today, the three elements are perceived by legal acts like the HIPAA of 1996, which safeguards privacy and confidentiality with simultaneous consequences upon violating the privacy of a patient. Privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism work towards the best of a patient’s interest, values, and life. Also, nurses are responsible for diverse caregiving activities in healthcare, thus, they must uphold privacy, confidentiality, and professionalism.
References
Demirsoy, N., & Kirimlioglu, N. (2016). Protection of privacy and confidentiality as a patient right: physicians' and nurses' viewpoints. Biomedical Research, 27(4), 1437-1448. http://www.biomedres.info/biomedical-research/protection-of-privacy-and-confidentiality-as-a-patient-right-physicians-and-nurses-viewpoints.pdf
Farnan, J. M. (2013). Online Medical Professionalism: Patient and Public Relationships: Policy Statement From the American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards. Annals of Internal Medicine, 158(8), 620. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-158-8-201304160-00100
Gostin, L. O., Levit, L. A., & Nass, S. J. (Eds.). (2009). Beyond the HIPAA privacy rule: enhancing privacy, improving health through research . National Academies Press.
Kayaalp, M. (2018). Patient privacy in the era of big data. The Balkan medical journal, 35(1), 8. doi: 10.4274/balkanmedj.2017.0966
