Advocating for Health Care Morals and ethics are critical parts of the foundation of nursing. Compassion, caring, and advocacy is the main characteristics that each nurse in the nursing profession should possess and evoke each day in the performance of their clinical practice. Just like any other profession, nurses must also operate within ethical standards, professional guidelines and perform their clinical practice in the parameters of the law of their respective state. However, there is a fine line that distinguishes ethics and law, which can get muddles especially within the nursing profession because nurses are not able to ethically agree with the law, but they must adhere to procedures and protocols at the same time. The case scenario presented places Lena is a difficult ethical situation and the nursing code she vowed to honor.

Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) it is illegal for a healthcare worker to provide information regarding a patient to anyone else and this includes other healthcare professionals in unless they are required to do so in the course of performing their work and medical treatment (Sarpatwari, Kesselheim, Malin, Gagne, & Schneeweiss, 2014). Therefore, this means...

However, this does not prohibit Lena who is a community health care nurse who has specialized in the field of HIV and AIDS from cautioning their family or loved ones about the risks of the disease. Lena can also offer to assist her sister to get her tested or seek treatment options for such a condition. Lena should educate the patient regarding the Partner Notification Program, that encourages a person who has tested positive for HIV infection to refer any person they might have had any sexual relations with or have shared drug injecting equipment with for counseling and HIV testing. This would encourage the patient to be responsible and in this case, the patient would inform Lena's sister and she would know of boyfriend’s HIV status. Using this specific code, the health department is educating the patient and encouraging them to let his/her partners know about their status.
According to the American Nurses Association, there are provisions in its Code of Ethics that specifies how nurses are required to handle themselves within the clinical practice. In this case study, Lena should first executer her duties as she would with any other of her…