Lab result reporting
The issue of privacy and security of health information has been addressed by nursing advocacy as presented in the annual ethics survey carried out in 2016. After taking laboratory tests, patients have always been waiting for the doctor to release the test results. Nevertheless, the legislation suggests that patients should be granted the right to request their laboratory tests results directly from the laboratory. The idea had been supported following the amendment of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments by the Center for Medicare. However, releasing clinical laboratory test results have to adhere to the nursing ethics that have raised the need for nursing advocacy. Although the rule eliminates the privacy rule established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, access has been granted to patients such that they can easily access their test results from the laboratory (Maddux et. al, 2018).
The legislation requires laboratory nurses to maintain the ethics of the faculty by presenting the results to the authorized personnel. According to nursing ethics, an authorized person will be an individual who has the authority under the state law to order tests or receive the tests. The new rules will not allow the laboratory to interpret the results for the patients. In return, it will add another duty to the nurses to redirect the patient to the healthcare providers for interpretation of the results (Salameh et. al, 2019). Also, the nurses have to maintain protection of the lab results for a patient’s privacy. The rule supports patient engagement that would be important for enhancing a better healthcare system.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The nursing advocacy needs to create awareness of the legislation in order to inform the patients of the new rule. It would reduce the anxiety created in patients waiting for the laboratory test results. However, patients will need to be educated on how to interpret the results in order to avoid any misunderstanding due to different sources of related information especially the internet.
References
Maddux, P. T., Farrell, M. B., Ewing, J. A., & Tilkemeier, P. L. (2018). Improved compliance with reporting standards: A retrospective analysis of Intersocietal Accreditation Commission Nuclear Cardiology Laboratories. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology , 25 (3), 986-994.
Salameh, J. P., McInnes, M. D., Moher, D., Thombs, B. D., McGrath, T. A., Frank, R., ... & Bossuyt, P. M. (2019). Completeness of reporting of systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy based on the PRISMA-DTA reporting guideline. Clinical chemistry , 65 (2), 291-301.
