Ethical Code Development for North Okanagan Hospice Society: Protecting Digital Patient Data Essay

Introduction

Ethics is paramount so medical personnel can operate with all available instruments without negative consequences. The moral principles of the activities of doctors and nurses must be regulated so clinics can conduct their activities in an organized manner and provide sufficient quality care to all patients. Thus, ethical codes are justified because people and all stakeholders must understand how reliable healthcare providers are.

Providing sufficient ethical regulation can help ensure that physicians have a better understanding of how they should act. Modernization of the world and medicine requires introducing new rules concerning the emergence of innovative technologies. Thus, creating a code of ethics for the North Okanagan Hospice Society (NOHS) in an area that has not previously been addressed is necessary.

Ethical Code

Due to the rapidly evolving digital landscape and the implementation of technology in the delivery of healthcare services, it becomes necessary to modernize the ethical rules in NOHS. The new Code of ethics will ensure the best possible safety and privacy of confidential and private customer data entered into the digital space. The Code sets out the basic principles and recommendations for protecting patient information. The main points that this Code contains are noted as follows:

1. Healthcare providers must maintain and protect clients’ confidentiality in every possible way using digital tools provided by the clinic or any other organization where the employee is registered.
2. Medical staff should promote the implementation of measures to protect digital patient data (Lustgarten et al., 2020). This means that doctors and nurses must assist technical staff in implementing protective mechanisms as effectively as possible in the patient database and electronic medical record system.
3. Healthcare personnel must ensure that informed consent is obtained from the client following the form provided by North Okanagan Hospice Society.
4. Clinic staff should ensure that only the minimum necessary patient data is collected and digitized.
5. Medical personnel must maintain the integrity of data and catalog and systematically organize them for more convenient access to information in the future (Lustgarten et al., 2020).
6. The provider must authorize access to client data only for personnel who directly work with the client.
7. When storing and transmitting confidential information, it is necessary to ensure strong encryption and two-factor authentication to ensure comprehensive protection.
8. The attending physician must always retain Physical copies of essential confidential data during the patient’s care.

Validity and Necessity of the Code of Ethics

The need for a code of ethics can be observed among clinic staff and patients. This is because it is designed to provide the best protection and safety of confidential patient data. With the current development of technology and the progress observed in the provision of medical services, electronic health records are beginning to be increasingly implemented in clinics.

This necessitates the creation of a regulatory document that can indicate how personnel should deal with electronic data in such a way as to ensure their complete safety (Thapa & Camtepe, 2021). When new methods of digitalization, storage, and retrieval of patient information are introduced, staff may not fully understand their ethical responsibilities about these types of data collection and storage. Thus, a code of ethics is needed to help healthcare professionals manage data better.

For patients, such a code of ethics will increase confidence in the medical institution. Clients will be more confident that doctors can adequately handle confidential information entered into digital registries (Thapa & Camtepe, 2021). In addition, compliance with regulatory requirements will ensure that all medical institution stakeholders can ensure that their private information is stored appropriately and that medical personnel comply with the requirements for data security. Maintaining trust will be possible to ensure more open collaboration and maintain a positive patient experience in the health care facility.

Case Study and Related Problems

A potential case study would be when NOHS transitions to an electronic health records system. However, the organization may be concerned about how clinicians will handle data and how they understand their ethical responsibilities and obligations regarding digital information.

Nurse Jane, who is of high moral character, discovers that her colleague Robert has obtained the electronic data of a patient not under his care. The worker explained to Jane that he was concerned about the patient’s health since he knew him personally. However, this acquisition of confidential information worries Jane, but she does not know what she needs to do and how ethical it is to obtain the private digital data of a third-party patient.

In this case, the organization faces several problems related to ethical behavior in healthcare centers. First, a problem arises when a medical professional can access the confidential data of a patient to whom he has no relation. This is a significant flaw since, without a code of ethics appropriate to this situation, Robert did not realize that he was acting unlawfully.

The American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics states that nurses do not have the right to access the confidential information of other people’s patients (Tluczek et al., 2019). However, Robert did not apply this rule to this case since the information he acquired was digital. The ANA Code of Ethics can be applied to this situation so that personnel must be sufficiently trained to interact with information. The developed Code of Ethics is intended to fill gaps in this area.

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Code of Ethics may apply to the case study. This document is relevant because it contains information regarding operations carried out with patients’ personal information. The IAPP Code of Ethics emphasizes the importance of ongoing staff development and training to ensure they can adequately handle digital data (McStay, 2020).

Thus, Robert could not have made his mistake if he had understood that it was unethical and that he should not have allowed the patient’s personal information to be shared. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which regulates personal information handling and private data security, can also be applied to this case (Stadler, 2021).

HIPAA is relevant to the current situation as it obliges medical institutions to promptly ensure complete protection of patient data and protect it from leakage. Medical institutions must promptly take the necessary measures to prevent personal data from falling into the wrong hands. A code of ethics for electronic data management thus developed can provide a framework for organizations.

The case is ethical because it led to the dissemination of confidential patient data to which nurse Robert should not have had access. Thus, the medical institution violated the ethical aspects of providing medical care and protecting personal information. This could potentially cause emotional harm to patients from third parties obtaining their information.

In addition, Robert has access to the data, but the patient’s attending doctor and nurse are responsible for it. Thus, the treating doctor would be responsible in any situation where the data would be disseminated further and harm the patient (Thapa & Camtepe, 2021). This gives rise to Robert’s ethical responsibility in that he has endangered not only his client but also his colleagues.

Ways to Resolve the Issue

One possible solution to the situation is implementing a comprehensive training program that could increase the awareness of personnel handling digital data. This training program should implement a developed code of ethics to ensure that staff understand their responsibilities and what actions may be considered immoral.

A possible consequence of such a plan could be to increase the awareness of medical personnel about what actions they can take regarding electronic patient data and what actions entail an ethical violation (Lustgarten et al., 2020). This leads to another consequence: leaks of patients’ data may not happen again. However, the negative consequence of such a decision may be using many resources and the deprivation of free time from staff so that they can undergo training.

Another solution may be to patch the data security. An organization can comprehensively assess its data management system to identify and correct weaknesses. Such work may involve updating software or writing a new data-storage algorithm. A potential consequence of this option is increased data security and greater integrity within the clinic’s system. The negative consequence is the initially high costs of restructuring and updating the software (Thapa & Camtepe, 2021). In addition, the disadvantage of this option is that the staff will be left without clear instructions for working with the created or improved program.

The best solution to address all the problems is staff training, as this will give people an understanding of how they should handle digital confidential patient data. This option can bring more benefits since data will not be transferred to unauthorized persons due not to strict restrictions but to the conscious attitude of people towards the use of digital data(Bani Issa et al., 2020). Thus, by implementing this solution, the organization will achieve better results thanks to the coordinated future work of staff without spending additional resources on monitoring and software updates.

Biggest Takeaways of Growth

The main takeaways and areas of growth during the course are understanding how ethics is an integral part of providing sufficient quality care. In this way, it will be possible to more consciously observe moral norms and boundaries, even in cases where they are not clearly defined (Bani Issa et al., 2020).

The view on the importance of ethics at the end of the course differs from the first week in that this training provides a sufficient understanding of those essential aspects that can help ensure ethical care and delivery of health care. In the tasks of the first and second weeks, it was possible to use feedback to write the final work in such a way as to take into account all the mistakes made and conduct a comprehensive analysis of aspects that needed to be corrected. By doing this, the writing of the final paper was more streamlined and of higher quality to meet learning objectives and achieve ethical goals.

Conclusion

It should be noted that the Code of ethics is a mandatory component for any medical institution. This regulatory document must cover all aspects of the organization’s work so that medical personnel can fully fulfill all their obligations. Ensuring digital literacy and protecting sensitive patient data is essential to quality care. Medical personnel must constantly ensure that private data is securely protected and cannot be passed on to others.

References

Bani Issa, W., Al Akour, I., Ibrahim, A., Almarzouqi, A., Abbas, S., Hisham, F., & Griffiths, J. (2020). Privacy, confidentiality, security and patient safety concerns about electronic health records. International nursing review, 67(2), 218-230. Web.

Lustgarten, S. D., Garrison, Y. L., Sinnard, M. T., & Flynn, A. W. (2020). Digital privacy in mental healthcare: current issues and recommendations for technology use. Current opinion in psychology, 36, 25-31. Web.

McStay, A. (2020). Emotional AI, soft biometrics and the surveillance of emotional life: An unusual consensus on privacy. Big Data & Society, 7(1). Web.

Stadler, A. (2021). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and its impact on privacy and confidentiality in healthcare [Senior Honors Theses, Liberty University]. Jerry Falwell Library. Web.

Thapa, C., & Camtepe, S. (2021). Precision health data: Requirements, challenges and existing techniques for data security and privacy. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 129. Web.

Tluczek, A., Twal, M. E., Beamer, L. C., Burton, C. W., Darmofal, L., Kracun, M., Zanni, K. & Turner, M. (2019). How American nurses association code of ethics informs genetic/genomic nursing. Nursing ethics, 26(5), 1505-1517. Web.