This reflection indentifies what I have learnt about confidentiality and privacy, patient’s right to know about their health condition health and empathic response in Nursing Profession.
Nursing as a caring profession needs communicating receptively, empathy, trust and respect to establish and maintain a strong therapeutic relationship with the patient and the family.
I will make reference to a significant experience I had as a student nurse during my clinical practice in the obstetric and gynaecology unit of the hospital I trained in my country.
Confidentiality will be maintained at all times. During the period of my placement, I was assigned Mrs M who was diagnosed with Gestational Trophoblastic Disease (GTD). During my break period, I walked with my colleague through the hallway to the cafeteria and we were engaged in a discussion about my patient’s diagnosis and the prognosis. I told her that according to the discussion the doctor had with the nursing team, she had minimal chances of survival from the disease. Unknown to us, the patient’s son was following us at the back.
When my break period was over, I came back to the unit to check on my patient. On getting to her bed side, I notice she was crying so I tried to console her and know why she was crying. She asked me why nobody told her about her illness knowing it was serious and will lead to death. She asked why we lied to her.
My initial thought when I met her crying was that she was in a severe pain, but when she asked the question; I knew that the son told her about what he overheard me discussing with my colleague in the hallway.
Upon reflection, I had the ethical and legal responsibility to maintain the confidentiality and privacy of client health information obta...
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...hought about my experience with Mrs M including the breach of confidentiality, false reassurance I gave her that her condition would improve with treatment, I could not help but cry.
If I could change the experience in a way, I could have acted with integrity, honesty and professionalism in all my dealings with Mrs M and other health team members.
In conclusion, reflecting on this my past experience had helped me in promoting the values of client’s well being, respecting client choice, assuring privacy and confidentiality, respecting sanctity and quality of life, maintain commitments, respecting truthfulness, and ensuring fairness in the use of resources. (CNO 2002)
College of Nursing of Ontario (2002). Ethics. Toronto: Author
Kunyk, D., & Olson, J.K. (2001). Clarification of the conceptualizations of empathy.
Journal of Advanced Nursing, 35(3), 317-325.
A basic definition of confidentiality is that information about a patient is not discussed openly (Edge and Groves, 2007). This ethical principle became an issue when the government gave medical facilities lists of people who were in the study. Again, the patients were not informed that they would not be able to
...as a positive outcome and resolution. We will continuously strive to impact and influence the lives of the people we have been charged to oversee, with a heart that’s always willing to serve. We believe that we cannot expect to incorporate integrity within our clients without first exhibiting integrity within ourselves.
and I recall one patient that would forever change the way I interact with patients. It was
Today I challenged myself to look at my clients differently, and to be quite honest it made me feel a lot better. I thought about how I would feel if someone treated me like a liar; I would more than likely be disappointed and act in accordance. Miller's comment made perfect scene, and I will continue to treat clients in accordance.
Healthcare provider’s perception and judgment in the patient’s well being as well as taking into account the right of the patient in every action is one of the key elements in nursing practice. International Council of Nurses (ICN), (2006) states “The nurse at all times maintains standards of personal conduct which reflect well on the profession and enhance public confidence” (p. 3). Furthermore, nursing action guided by theory and principles of moral and legal rights complements excellent nursing care. Nurse’s awareness in moral and legal codes helps them control the complicated scenario encountered and direct the nurses in the best possible action answerable by law (Lachman, 2006).
“Communication is the heart of nursing… your ability to use your growing knowledge and yourself as an instrument of care and caring and compassion” (Koerner, 2010, as cited in Balzer-Riley, 2012, p. 2). The knowledge base which Koerner is referring to includes important concepts such as communication, assertiveness, responsibility and caring (Balzer-Riley, 2012). Furthermore, communication is complex. It includes communication with patients, patient families, doctors, co-workers, nurse managers and many others. Due to those concepts and the variety of people involved, barriers and issues are present. Knowing how to communicate efficiently can be difficult.
She also had ovarian cancer, was on heparin, and was waiting for surgery to be scheduled. I displayed professionalism by not sharing personal patient information with anyone outside of her health care team. This patient was a nurse in her previous career, ands he was very educated on her disease process. I did take notes during my time with her, but all notes I wrote I shredded before leaving the floor for the day. There was also respect for my patient shown on my part by giving her rest time when she stated she was
Therapeutic relationship is an essential part of nursing; it is the foundation of nursing (CNO, 2009). The National Competency Standard for Registered Nurses state that nurses are responsible for “establishing, sustaining and concluding professional relationship with individuals/groups.” Throughout this essay the importance of forming a therapeutic relationships will be explained. The process of building a therapeutic relationship begins from prior to time of contact with a patient, the interpersonal skills of the nurse; then the process includes skills required by the nurse to communicate effectively, including respect, trust, non-judgment and empathy. The way to portray these skills can be via verbal or non-verbal cues that are important to understand how they influence a person. The process and skills listed below are all relevant to nurses working in the contemporary hospital environment today.
As an advocate for patients, their information is solely for helping the patient understand their condition more and making the best decisions on their behalf, while in cooperating their beliefs and values (Nurses Code of Ethics, 2015). This also includes not talking about patient’s information with other colleagues, family or friends, unless it’s work related. It’s just like with any other situation, would you mind if your best friend would causally tell your secrets to other local colleagues? It’s a form of disrespect and violation of personal space as an individual. As a nurse advocate for patient it’s also important to make sure you’re a voice as well, for the defenseless groups such as, children, elderly and the mentally ill.
Medical records and their contents have been an important issue concerning privacy for physicians and their patients. A health care reform bill which passed legislation in 1996 is known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) had a new rule put into place in 2000, which requires health care physicians and insurance providers to put into place new procedures that would guard patient health information ("Patient Privacy and Confidentiality", 2013).
Every Wednesday I was assigned a patient to attend to by a specific nurse who was also my supervisor in a hospital setting. My instructor ensured that this nurse followed my progress in respect to the way I was to handle the patient through written report. While taking care of the patient, I recorded various changes, he/she indicates towards recovery. I reported these changes to the nurse. While participating in this activity, I was expected to follow the strict guidelines by the instructor and nurse; as required by the rules and regulations, and code of conduct in nursing.
In nursing practice, communication is essential, and good communication skills are paramount in the development of a therapeutic nurse/patient relationship. This aim of this essay is to discuss the importance of communication in nursing, demonstrating how effective communication facilitates a therapeutic nurse/patient relationship. This will be achieved by providing a definition of communication, making reference to models of communication and explaining how different types of communication skills can be used in practise.
The introduction paragraph gives information on communication and the impact that it has on patient-nurse relationships. It gives the reader an understanding of what is involved in true communication and how that it is a fundamental part of nursing and skills all nurses need. It leads those interested in delivering quality nursing to read on. Showing us the significance that communication makes in the
Communication is an important concept of caring in nursing because the nurse has to know how to communicate efficiently in order to get the patient to trust the nurse enough to open up to the nurse and also the nurse needs to communicate respectfully to show the patient that they genuinely do care about their health and want to help them as much as they
I think it is important that I clarify my own values to ensure that my care is client-centered. Self- reflection during care is also fundamental as it makes me aware of my actions and whether they are establishing a therapeutic relationship or doing the opposite.. Finally, I need to learn to be more empathetic towards my patient’s situations by being interactive, gaining insight and avoid being focused on the task and more on being with the situation. Some things that I will preserve are attentively listening, demonstrating attending behaviours and maintaining my patient’s dignity by ensuring privacy and