Mental Wealth in Nursing: Law and Ethics Essay for NS4101 Module

This essay, created for the NS4101 Law and Ethics for Nurses module, analyzes a scenario involving a patient with HIV, focusing on legal, ethical, and mental wealth issues. The essay examines the legal issue of data protection, highlighting the breach of confidentiality when a nurse, who is a family friend, discloses the patient's HIV status. It discusses the ethical principle of autonomy and how it is affected by the disclosure of sensitive medical information. Furthermore, the essay explores the mental wealth issue of multidisciplinary team working, emphasizing the importance of coordination and communication within healthcare teams. The essay references the Data Protection Act and relevant literature to support its arguments, offering insights into how to prevent breaches of patient confidentiality and uphold ethical standards in nursing practice. The essay aims to create awareness among people with respect to this disease.

Law and ethics for Nurses
(Mental Wealth)

Table of Contents
Scenario chosen...............................................................................................................................3
Issue.................................................................................................................................................3
Legal issue: Data protection........................................................................................................3
Ethical issue: Autonomy..............................................................................................................3
Mental wealth issue: Multidisciplinary team working................................................................3
Theories...........................................................................................................................................4
Data protection act.......................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

Scenario chosen
The chosen scenario is HIV with context of Chinedu. The reason behind choosing this
scenario is the lack of awareness among people. Along with that people are having threat with
regard to this disease. Thus, the main source of motivation is to create awareness and ease among
people with respect to this disease. The issue concerned with HIV includes lack of awareness,
inadequate legal act and negative perspective of people related with this HIV.
Issue
Legal issue: Data protection
It is major issue with respect to HIV. This means that hospitals or the care centre have to
take adequate practices and strategies with respect to protecting the data of the affected people
(Courbier, Dimond and Bros-Facer, 2019). As when Chinedu met with an accident and injury.
Then the information related with Chinedu with respect to HIV positive is being leaked by the
nurse which was a family friend. The possible consequence could include any major impact in
the form of loosing of trust of patient with regard to hospital. Likewise, the wife of Chinedu may
also got negatively affected as the news come on a sudden moment. The breach can be prevented
if the nurse would not leak the news and kept it confidential as it contains the private information
of Chinedu.
Ethical issue: Autonomy
The autonomy is essential in this scenario because Chinedu has full right to make its
information confidential as it was related with its personal life. However, it is being affected
because in case of performance of regular test the HIV positive test revels the confidential
information. Although, it would not be counted as wrong because in case occurrence of
emergency it is essential that the medial history of the patient is to be revealed. This can be
protected by applying an ethical code of conduct that will ensure the principle of confidentiality.
Mental wealth issue: Multidisciplinary team working
Lack of co-ordination, communication can be counted as an issue with respect to
multidisciplinary team working (Jennings and Astin, 2017). This is because as a team consist of
several members with different perspective and values so it is very essential that there should be
presence of adequate co-ordination and co-operation among them. In case of this scenario, the

same issue is being occurred where the information is shared by friend nurse instead of co-
ordinating with the team.
It is to be noted that MDT can proves to be useful for mitigation of ethical and legal issues
because it has an incorporation of various members with a common objective.
Theories
Data protection act
It is one of the major act that is applicable to hospital and care centres. As per this act it is
the duty of every concerned authority that they should protect the data of the client by
appropriate rules and penalties (Abouelmehdi and et.al., 2017). Yes, this is equally applicable in
the scenario. However, it can be breached if the information is required to be shared for meeting
emergency situation. The same incident is occurred in the case also where the nurse share
information when Chinedu was in hospital due to injury. Although in case of breach of this act
there is penalty provision but it will not be implied because it was done in case of emergency and
without any intentional effort of being harm.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Abouelmehdi, and et.al., 2017. Big data security and privacy in healthcare: a review. Procedia
Computer Science. 113. pp.73-80.
Courbier, S., Dimond, R. and Bros-Facer, V., 2019. Share and protect our health data: an
evidence based approach to rare disease patients’ perspectives on data sharing and data
protection-quantitative survey and recommendations. Orphanet journal of rare
diseases. 14(1). pp.1-15.
Jennings, C. and Astin, F., 2017. A multidisciplinary approach to prevention. European journal
of preventive cardiology. 24(3_suppl). pp.77-87.
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