Leadership theory

Leadership theory
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Maintaining confidentiality is important in nursing practice since it allows a healthy doctor-patient relationship to be established. According to Beltran-Aroca, et al., (2016), breaching privacy of patients in the clinical setting is a common occurrence in recent days due to the shortage of healthcare professionals and the rise in demand for healthcare. Sometimes clinicians, nurses, intern students, and other stakeholders share information regarding patients which is unethical.
I was once required to share a sensitive ethical issue practice change decision regarding patient confidentiality. I am a director of nursing in a skilled nursing facility. The breaches of confidentiality occur when a healthcare professional disclosures a patient’s information (Beltran-Aroca et al., 2016). This problem was common in my organization. This situation forced me to address the issue and therefore helped protect patients from defamation that could have resulted from the exposure. Since the sharing of patient information occurred within the hospital setting, employees were informed about this problem and notified that various techniques would be employed to end it. I decided to implement surveillance cameras to monitor how patient information was stored, used and shared. My decision also included implementing a health information management system that would ensure that digital and traditional medical information was protected from unauthorized persons.

The stakeholders affected by the decision included physicians, residents, nursing staff, nursing assistants, orderlies, administrative personnel and students. I think that I was able to expose the problem for everyone to see and this helped them understand the need for the suggested change. It could have been better if employees were given a chance to explain why they were involved in the behavior and their suggested solution to the problem. The situation could have been handled differently by allowing the stakeholders t/o give their opinion on the issue. Participative leadership could have been effective in this situation as it would have allowed people to participate, but the leader would have made the final decision. I think that the stakeholders would have had many and better ideas on how to solve the issue. The advantage of this approach is that the leader has a broad range of alternatives to choose from thereby, increasing the chance of selecting the most appropriate alternative.
References
Beltran-Aroca, C. M., Girela-Lopez, E., Collazo-Chao, E., Montero-Pérez-Barquero, M., & Muñoz-Villanueva, M. C. (2016). Confidentiality breaches in clinical practice: what happens in hospitals? BMC Medical Ethics, 17(1), 52. http://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-016-0136-y