Dilemma: Right vs. Right
Which Takes Precedence: Health Concerns or Privacy?
Sasheem is a nurse practitioner at a local health care center. One morning while Sasheem was busy with his first patient, he heard a commotion in the waiting room. When Sasheem went to investigate what the problem was, he saw that one of his patients, Mark, had fallen in front of the door. Mark obviously hit his head on something as he fell, since he was bleeding from a gash in his forehead. Before Saheem could say anything, one of the other people in the waiting room, ran up to assist him. She took his hand to calm him as she called to the receptionist, not noticing that he had bled onto his hand.
Mark is an AIDS patient, and the woman who ran up to help him was an off-duty nurse who was in the waiting room with a friend. Sasheem now has to decide whether or not to tell the nurse that Mark is an AIDS patient--Mark wants to maintain his privacy and asked Sasheem not to tell her.
On the one hand, Sasheem shouldn't tell because Mark is his patient and his knowledge of Mark's health is confidential. On the other hand, the nurse would want to know about Mark's AIDS so she could be tested for the slight possibility that she became infected from his blood.
What would you do?
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