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Legal issues Assignment Sample

   

Added on  2021-06-16

9 Pages2362 Words21 Views
ContentsIntroduction................................................................................................................................1Legal issues................................................................................................................................1Ethical issues..............................................................................................................................3Professional issues.....................................................................................................................5Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7Bibliography...............................................................................................................................7

IntroductionHealthcare practitioners are obligated to comply with the legal jurisdictions, ethical standardsand the prescribed professional conduct in order to fulfill their duties responsibly. Theassignment discusses on such case study of Sharni and Carla which primarily deals with theissues of privacy, confidentiality and consent. The assignment evaluates the legal, ethical andprofessional issues that could rise in the situation by analyzing different legal, ethical andprofessional policies and standards set by different authoritative bodies in Australia. After,the evaluation the assignment is concluded with the key findings.Legal issuesIn the provided case scenario it seemed that Sharni Smith was curious about the health of heracquaintance, Carla who she knew from her Mum group. Out of curiosity she accesses herfile to find out regarding her hospital admission and she came to know that she was operatedfor a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Post-shift she offered condolences to Carla on Facebook. Indoing so, it can be considered that she breached certain rights of Carla, namely the privacyand consent.The public and majority of the private healthcare sector needs to follow certain federal andState legislations for privacy management. The privacy Act 1988 controls the handling ofpersonal information. This Act has set a definition for personal information. Any true oruntrue information or opinion about and identified or reasonably identified person is personalregardless of being recorded in a material form or not (Allens, 2017). The medical and healthrecords are also classified as personal information. Therefore, the information of rupture ofectopic pregnancy of Carla will be considered as personal information under the Privacy Act.Not only personal, the health information is specifically regarded as sensitive personal

information and for the most sensitive category of information, the Act holds additionalsafeguards for their management (Anon., 2017). The Privacy Act clearly specifies the “healthservices” it includes and one of them is record-keeping about an individual’s physical ormental health with the objective of evaluating, preserving, improving or managing the his/herhealth. It signifies that Sharni must have taken Carla’s consent before retrieving herinformation and posting about her condition on her Facebook account. Apart from that the Privacy Act includes ten National Privacy Principles which regulate theminimum privacy standards for personal information handling. The principles include variousaspect of management of sensitive personal information like specific considerations shouldbe given while passing the health information of a person to others. It also includes principleregarding securing and storing data of the person. The health care practitioners should fulfillthese obligations or at the least ‘take reasonable steps’ to fulfill the obligations. However, itwas clear that Sharni who is a registered nurse did not meet these obligations or even tookreasonable steps to do so as by sharing about Carla’s miscarriage on her Facebook sherevealed sensitive personal information about Carla to presumably numerous people withoutobtaining an informed consent from Carla. It can be argued that the other nurse who wasappointed to attend Carla must have taken her consent before collecting her healthinformation but taking consent also involves that patient must be aware that his/herinformation will be used for what other purposes. The other nurses evidently did not takeconsent to post about her miscarriage on a social media platform as she might herself didn’tknow that.It can be considered that Sharni might not be aware regarding the legislations but it isessential for the healthcare providers to learn about the National Privacy Principles which arelegally binding. It is also recommended that they take professional help if required. TheAustralian Commission states that in case of any clash and inconsistency between the state or

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