Generally, people tend to sign documents without thoroughly reading through them and asking for second opinion, sometimes this is because of excitement when one has been long waiting for something to happen. If this kind of mistake can occur in people who are physically and mentally stable how much effect does it have on people who are hospitalized to sign documents?. This means that one is bound by the contents of the writing contained and embodied in a document to which one affixes his signatures. Signature is defined as a mark or sign made by an individual on an instrument or document to signify knowledge, approval, acceptance, or obligation. Its purpose is to authenticate a writing, and to bind the individual signing the writing by the provisions contained in the document
An incident occurred during my block rotation whereby patient’s employers came by to the patient for him to sign some documents and also inquired about his condition. This happened to a patient which was next to the patient I was assigned to and it happened that I was writing my clinical notes that time. Firstly, nurses came to the patient and told him that his bosses wanted to see him, they asked him whether he wants to see them or not then the patient agreed to see him. Two men walked in with bunch of documents, I tried to mind my own business but this did not sit well with me. After, some time they were talking with the patient I saw them handing the papers to him to sign, at the time there was no nurse nor a patient representative to witness this as the patient was not in a good condition to sign document, according to me. They later asked what he has been diagnosed with, my level of concern heightened as I felt their conversation was getting more and more inappropriate. Luckily, he did not disclose that but they said they going to ask his doctor. I did not know whether it was my place to reprimand this or not, I battled with myself from the moment he signed those papers to the point where they asked about his diagnosis.
After they left to ask the doctor about his condition, I went to him and asked if he is aware of what he just signed, he then told me that it was just his leave extension as he had used all his days for leave. I was a bit relieved but the fact that he had to sign those documents at that particular moment, and they did not wait till he is medically stable raised some concerns. The nurses came back to ask if they should disclose his condition to his employers and the patient refused which i think was a very sane decision at the moment. My general block at KDH which is located at a low socio-economic area made me realize that most patients are know aware of their rights and these are not well described in admission. After this incident i had lot of questions as a results i asked several people for their take on the sequence of the events, most were is support with me that it is not well appropriate for patient to sign work related stuff while hospitalized and disclosing their condition to his employers. Other also had different views that this had to be done to extend the patient’s leave and there was a consent from the nurses even though we may not know the nature of their conversation prior to signing the papers. Both of these answers made sense, but these types of questions need to be asked in order to grow as a healthcare practitioner.
In order to broader my knowledge about ethics in health care setting and to understand the situation I had witnessed i went on to few articles on confidentiality and patient’s rights.
References
Benjamin, M. (1992). Ethics in nursing.
Haggerty, L. A., & Hawkins, J. (2000). Informed consent and the limits of confidentiality. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 22(4), 508-514.
Ulrich, C. M., Taylor, C., Soeken, K., O’Donnell, P., Farrar, A., Danis, M., & Grady, C. (2010). Everyday ethics: ethical issues and stress in nursing practice. Journal of advanced nursing, 66(11), 2510-2519.