Legal and Ethical Requirements of a Registered Nurse in Digital Health

This article discusses the legal and ethical requirements of a registered nurse while accessing digital health information. It covers privacy laws, confidentiality, and exceptions to these laws.

Digital Heath Legal and
Ethical Registered Nurse

Table of Contents
Discussing the legal and ethical requirements of a registered nurse while accessing the digital
health information............................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Discussing the legal and ethical requirements of a registered nurse while
accessing the digital health information
A registered nurse is an individual who has completed the required and prescribed education
which is generally a bachelor degree in nursing, is suitable for practise and should be registered
as registered nurse under Australian Health Practitioner Regulation National law.
The personal information of patients that the nurses receive in professional capacity should be
treated as confidential and private(Aggar and et.al., 2018). The information should be treated in
accordance with the Guidelines to the National Privacy Principles 2001, which is in support of
the Privacy Act 1999. The act states Health Privacy Principles that govern the collection,
storage, assessing and disclosure of the health information. There are several policies and
legislations in various jurisdictions that guide the confidentiality and privacy of health care
records and patient’s personal health information and all other details related to the patients.
The NMBA Code of Conduct describes the ethical and legal obligations of a registered nurse
that they have to follow while accessing the digital health information of patients requiring,
receiving or who have received care and its privacy.
The registered nurses have to protect the privacy of patients’ information under legal and
ethical obligations. This encompasses the use of the information gathered in professional
capacity as a nurse to be limited to professional uses only and keeping it confidential which
means the information cannot be shared with anyone except for some certain cases and
individuals as mentioned in the standards(Code of Ethics, 2021).All the information related to a
person, their physical or mental health or disability, the services and medications they are or
will take, their phone numbers, address, etc. should be kept confidential. The registered nurses
have to take care that the devices that have the health information cannot be accessed by
irrelevant people and the nurses should also access these devices carefully so that people who
are not supposed to look at the information cannot peek into the devices. The registered nurses

have to maintain the privacy and security of the information even while writing, typing and
storing it.
Even in the cases where it is necessary to share the information with nominated carer or other
members of a team to take certain decisions, it should be first informed to the concerned person
or their representative whose information is being disclosed. If due to certain reasons, the
registered nurses cannot obtain consent for the concerned person receiving care or their
representative, the nurses have to use professional judgement to understand the necessity of
disclosure of some information only in the best interest of the persons’ wellbeing and
safety(Professional standards, 2022). There are some exceptions to these privacy and
confidentiality laws when the information has to be shared without consent. These exceptions
are - when someone is unconscious and their health and safety are under risk, the information
can be shared with the doctors and nurses that will conduct your treatment so that they can
know about your allergies to any drugs. It is also shared to warn the public when someone
suffers from a serious contagious disease.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aggar, C. & et.al. (2018). Evaluation of a community transition to professional practice
program for graduate registered nurses in Australia. Nurse Education in Practice. 32.
101-107
Online
Professional standards. 2022. Online. Available through: <Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia - Professional standards (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au)>.
Code of Ethics. 2021. Online. Available through:
<https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Statements/Professional-
standards.aspx>.