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Explain How To Balance The Tension Between Confidentiality In Health And Social Care

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In care home setting where residents’ personal information can be easily accessed by. As a health profession it may be the occasion when dilemma arises of what records and reports, how, and when can be shared with whom. In order to balance the tension between confidentiality and openness, apart from strictly adhering with legal requirement and policies and procedures as I have mentioned above, there are ethical principles can be considered.

The autonomy from the individual is the first factor to consider. Namely we have to obtain the consent from individual. Because the records and reports is personal information which may contain intimate information and individual would not want to share with any other parties. This can be illustrated by sharing resident’s information with their family. We have a male resident who had …show more content…

This can be happened at the incident of intentional harming others. For instance if one resident told a carer that he/she feels really low; do not to wish to live and thinking to set fire on the building. They ask the care to keep secret for them because they trust the carer and do not wish the carer to tell anyone. As a care they have duty of care to keep confidentiality and also the duty of care to keep resident safe. By recording the information in resident’s record and sharing with other professionals; their action can be justified by saving other people’s life. Conversely if the carer kept the secret for the resident and other people died as the result of the fire, the carer will be very likely to be prosecuted for not disclosing information. This principle will also apply with the incident of safeguarding investigation, care team need to make the decision of sharing information with investigator even thought the decision against resident’s wishes for the reason of safeguarding other

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