Confidentiality in the Moral Community of Nursing

Confidentiality in the Moral Community of Nursing

Laabs (2008) stated that nurses require applied ethics to give moral direction while practicing. A moral community is a safe “place where community members are encouraged to bring ethical concerns to light and deal with these in a manner that promotes shared understanding and mutual respect”(Hardingham, 2004). In this paper I will tell you a story of an ethical conflict that I have encountered about breach of confidentiality, I will then go on to discuss how this experience has help to teach me about my own morals and how I can utilize this knowledge to inform nursing practice and encourage others to perform ethically as members of a moral community.

The Ethical Concern

I have changed the following story to protect the confidentiality of the people involved. A nurse was caught reading the electronic chart of a person that is not in her care by the clinic manager. The chart she is reading belongs to the pervious clinic manager who has recently passed away due to cancer. She was a much loved member of the team and her death was very hard on the entire staff. She had let the staff know of her diagnoses and that she was taking time off of work, but kept how sick she really was to herself for reasons that I will not speculate. She was treated at both a larger center and locally. She had gone out of her way to protect her privacy by restricting access to her electronic chart to only allow her chosen health care team access. I will not speculate the reasons that nurse accessed the chart; however I do not believe that the actions of this nurse were out of malaise. The nurse that accessed the chart was promptly dismissed from her position and in the weeks to follow two other nurses we...

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