Question

Sue T. is the nurse manager for medical-surgical units at a community hospital. She is currently enrolled in a nursing master's degree program at the local university. As part of the requirements for a Nursing Management course, Sue proposes to conduct a study linking nursing interventions and nursing outcomes. She returns to her place of employment at night for two weeks to audit patient charts and collect the data she needs for her assignment. She makes copies of the patient records that are particularly helpful and takes them home to write the final paper.

As Sue is developing her paper, she realizes that the information she has collected may be helpful in completing her nursing staff performance evaluations due next month.   She decides to collect further patient outcome data for individual nurses to monitor their performance.

Consider the following

1. Has Sue violated ethical principles by collecting data for a college assignment? Why or Why not?
2. Has Sue violated ethical principles by collecting patient data for employee performance evaluations? Why or Why not?
3. What, if anything, should Sue have done differently in completing her college assignment?
4. What, if anything, should Sue have done differently in completing her employee performance evaluations?

Answer 1

1)Yes she has violated ethical principles for collecting data for a college assignment as she did not get the patient's consent for information retrieval.Neither were her purpose stated to the patients.Lack of informed consent led to violation of HIPPA(Health insurance portability and accountability act) as she didnt keep or use confidential information for patient care but for her own purposes.

2)No ,in this case she hasnt violated ethical principles by collecting patient data for performance evaluations.As a nurse manager,she has the right to chart audits for evaluating the staff performance.If her staff is working on patient care,assessment and risk minimisation,audit is required to see if they are doing the assigned role properly.

3)She would have first seeked permission from the hospital for doing her college research by using patient's data.Secondly,patients must be informed about the same and their consent must be taken by making them sign or filing the document.

4)In completing her staff evaluation,she must have discussed it with the staff members about the goals or implemented measures which they would be evaluated on.They must be aware about the audit of measuring or evaluating their performance.