The Obligation of a Healthcare Provider with Patients - Research Paper Example

Health care providers have an ethical responsibility to play when it comes to handling patients from child abuse or elderly abuse. In the society, statistics from Simmers (2008), state that most abuses became committed by individuals whom the victims knew. In handling such patients, it calls for the role of the code of ethics to swing into practice (Stuart, 2011). Any patient that comes, and got history of abuse often gets expected to be given a private chance for the healthcare provider to get a history from him or her.

Any information that the healthcare provider gets from the patient should always be kept in secret. This is because the code of ethics advocates for privacy and secrecy of patient’s health information. Once in hospital, such patients become the first ones, to be cared for and medical attention given when necessary. Furthermore, the healthcare provider got to be caring and understanding to the abused patient as it may affect their recovery. Abused children and abused adults often suffer from post traumatic stress disorder after the ordeal, and many require medical attention to prevent them.

Hence, abused children and abused adults should receive medical treatment and not discriminated at all (Stuart, 2011). Healthcare providers have a legal responsibility towards victims of child abuse or elderly abuse. . Often healthcare providers get called to attend court proceedings of the abused patient, hence require documented evidence of the medical report they had on that patient. The legal system when it comes to the way healthcare providers handle such patients remains extremely strict.

Furthermore, healthcare providers have a moral responsibility when it comes to reporting issues related to abused children or abused adults. There are some issues that often can be reported, but others become hidden (Simmers, 2008). The healthcare providers often become expected to have self-responsibility and consciousness in their minds in order to make excellent judgment. Health care providers often become confused on whether to report a given ordeal from an abused child or abused adult. From the moral perspective, children are more stigmatized than adults.

Abused children often recover slowly compared to abused adults. There often many factors that come to play when deciding on reporting such matters. Furthermore, one should always think about the family of the abused child or abused adult before reporting such matters (Simmers, 2008). Sometimes one may go to report a certain issue and affect the whole family negatively. Hence, healthcare providers need to be extra careful in such matters. In summary, health care providers prove to be extremely valuable in the provision of medical attention to abused children or abused adults.

They hence have a legal, ethical and moral responsibility over these people (Stuart, 2011). Furthermore, health care providers that stick to the ethical, moral and legal responsibility while reporting some issue relating to the abused child or abused adult, quit a