Patient Autonomy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Patient Autonomy - Essay Example It is not mere desiring but evaluation and weighing of alternatives by a person and selection based on her priorities. There are many ways we can discuss patient's autonomy. Discussion on medical confidentially usually focus on tension between physician's responsibility to keep patients secret and a physician 's legal and moral duty, on occasion, to reveal such confidences to their parties, such as families, employer, public health authorities, or police authorities. Confidentially serves as dual purpose. Firstly, it acknowledges respect of patient's privacy. Patient's most personal physical and psychological secrets are kept confidential to decrease sense of shame and vulnerability. Secondly, it is important in improving healthcare. Promise of confidentially permits people to trust and thus patient are encouraged to communicate honestly and forth rightly with their doctors, which is most important for their treatment. According to Siegler (597) challenges to confidentially arise because of patient's personal interest in maintaing confidentially come into conflict with his personal interest in receiving best health care. Modern high technology health care is available principally in hospitals which require many trained and socialized workers. And thus in order to provide best health care patient's medical records need to reveal to these workers. Again these treatments are very costly and can be afforded by few patients only. So it becomes essential to grant access to patients medical records to persons who are responsible for obtaining third party payment like chart viewers, financial officers, insurances advisor and quality care assessors. Siegler suggests some possible solutions to confidentiality. Those are: 1. In all nonbureaucratic, noninstitutional counters care should be taken to guaranty safety and confidentiality of patient's records. 2. Access to patient's records should be provided to only "need to know" persons. At some point most of patients should be given opportunity to review their medical records and make choices about which records to make available to everyone. This can be done by dividing entire records in different sections like medical and financial section. So only health professionals have access to medical information. But again keeping all records different leads to complexity in analyzing patient's problems. Thus Author want to tell that principle of medical confidentiality described in medical codes of ethics no longer exists. And by devoting attention to determine aspects of confidentiality worth retaining, public and profession can be better served. Truth- telling Should patients know the truth Is a very difficulty question that confront physician. According to Collins (605) telling the whole truth is often to perpetrate a cruelty of which many are incapable. This is particularly true of physician and if not they soon learns that art of medicine consist largely in skillfully mixing falsehood, and truth in order to provide patient with an amalgam which will make the metal of life wear and keep men from being poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, unpleasing to themselves and to those who love them. Based on experiences Collins (609) conclude that the patients do not want to know the truth about their maladies and that it is prejudicial to their well being to know it. No one can