Ethical Analysis Regarding the Reporting to CDC on HIV Rates (Coursework Sample)

Ethical Analysis
Name
Institution
MEMORANDUM
To: name
From: NURS 220 Student
Date: 9th April 2016
Re: Reporting HIV to CDC
Statement of the problem: your office has asked on the ethical aspect of reporting HIV to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Response
The present healthcare reporting statute obliges the healthcare institutions to report all the new diagnosed patient records to the state health care department for epidemic recording. With the HIV data, the CDC undertakes an epidemic monitoring through which the disease can be put under control from affecting the state's healthy being. Reporting HIV to the CDC has been a source of an arguable despite with different healthcare stakeholders posing their varied opinions on the ethical aspects of reporting the HIV status to the CDC as a health department. HIV status and reporting requirements are mandated to maintain utmost confidentiality by making the patient’s information confidential without disclosing them to a third party unless the patient allows disclosure CITATION Ral09 \l 1033 (Dolgoff, Loewenberg, & Harrington, 2009).
Disclosing the patient's HIV status data is unethical, a basis for the argument against reporting to CDC. However many states have already enacted these laws mandating the medical practitioners to report all new diagnoses to the CDC. In respect to the patient’s privacy, the some states have included a statute protecting the patient's identity directing the medical practitioners to forward the data using codes in the place of the individuals name CITATION CDC161 \l 1033 (CDC, 2016). Also, the healthcare institutions are also obliged to remove all personal information of an individual such as their address to ensure total anonymity. In other states, the law on disclosure of the HIV data has mandated the patients not to give out their names on testing to avoid name forwarding to CDC.
Dolgoff, Loewenberg, & Harrington (2009) assert that utilitarianism is preferred in an ethical dilemma relating to individualism. In this case, the law is caught up in an ethical dilemma that is to either to protect the confidentiality of patients, a preservation of a doctor-patient privilege or to protect the third party who are are the societal members. The law takes a path that overlooks at the individual rights onto controlling the society as a whole through a statute termed as, the partner notification law whereby an individual partner and family members are notified on the individuals HIV status to avoid infections. By informing the society, the law believes that infection probability shall be lowered as it may occur through sharing of sharp objects CITATION CDC161 \l 1033 (CDC, 2016).
As the state's duty to warn against the HIV infection, individuals diagnosed with HIV is mandated to inform their partners of their status failure to which they can be convicted in the court of law. This is in accordance to CDCs legal function to manage the national health trends by protecting states against heath epidemics such as HIV CITATION CDC161 \l 1033 (CDC, 2016). Based on the consequences of these acts, the society stands to benefit fully from the law mandates despite the ignorance placed on the patient's privacy. This is in support to the utilitarian theory that insists on ethically analysing dilemma based on their consequences, a being fully respected in this law whereby the wellbeing of the society ...