Health Informatics Ethics Rules

Health Informatics Ethics Rules
In the news article titled "Powell River Nurse Who Broke Patients' Privacy Rules May Lose Job After All," the nurse breached the ethical rule about the privacy of patients and what is expected of a health informatics professional (Lazaruk, 2017). These rules suggest the best response when faced with an ethical issue in an informatics setting. According to the first general principle that guides informatic ethics, every person has a fundamental right to privacy, and this means that nurses have a responsibility to ensure that they do not access patient data without a valid reason.
In the article, a nurse was fired since she accessed medical files of individuals she knew and co-workers. She accessed the private files for her personal use, and this is against the ethical requirements (Lazaruk, 2017). The IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals suggests that electronic records can only be communicated, accessed, used, or stored for legitimate purposes (International Medical Informatics Association, n.d.; CHIMA Code of Ethics, 2008). Moreover, several protocols also guide how these records should be accessed or used, but the nurse in the article did not act appropriately. Instead, she accessed information about her father-in-law, who had committed suicide.
Nurses have to follow the required rules and also get permission to use or acces...