Assume you are a visiting nurse for a long-term care facility. The facility is a private home licensed to care for ambulatory patients who do not require extensive medical care. You visit the facility to check blood pressures, check feet, administer medication, and otherwise check the general health of residents. On one of your visits you learn that the facility’s owner accepts valuable gifts from residents, such as jewelry, antique furniture, and handmade quilts. What will you do?
Discreetly council the facility’s owner about the inadvisability of accepting valuable gifts from residents, since the practice could be frowned upon by licensing authorities.
Assume you are a medical assistant in a reconstructive surgeon’s office. Your employer is talented and successful and suggests publishing a brochure of some of his more dramatic “before and after” transformations. What factors will have to be considered?
The most important factor to consider is the patient’s right to confidentiality. Photos of patients cannot be published without their written consent to do so.
