Patient's Right to Know: Caregiver with AIDS

DQ 3
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Discuss the potential controversy when considering a patient's right to know whether a caregiver has AIDS and the caregiver's right to privacy and confidentiality.
The health of patients is the primary objective of healthcare providers. Based on this premise, the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1991 indicated that infected physicians should either abstain from performing invasive procedures or only proceed if patients give consent. Although the AMA retracted this rule, other people still argue that physicians must disclose their HIV status to establish trust with patients. However, others argue that HIV infection does not belong to disclosable risks because of its remote risk. It has also been argued that a patient's interest in knowing the HIV status of a physician does not have sufficient moral force to justify involuntary disclosure when weighed against the personal interests of physicians (Horsman and Sheeran 2015). I believe that the HIV status of physicians and other healthcare workers is personal information that should n...