Is it morally permissible for hospital nurses to access prisoner-patients’ criminal histories?

Abstract

In the United States, information about a person’s criminal history is accessible with a name and date of birth. Ruth Crampton has studied nurses’ care for prisoner-patients in hospital settings and found care to be perfunctory and reactive. This article examines whether it is morally permissible for nurses in hospital settings to access information about prisoner-patients’ criminal histories. Nurses may argue for a right to such information based on the right to personal safety at work or the obligation to provide prisoner-patients with the care that they deserve. These two arguments are considered and rejected. It is further argued that accessing information about a prisoner-patient’s criminal history violates nurses’ duty to care. Care, understood through Sarah Ruddick’s account as work and relationship, requires nurses to be open and unbiased in order to do their part in forming a caring relationship with patients. Knowledge of a prisoner-patient’s criminal history inhibits the formation of this relationship and thus violates nurses’ duty to care.

Keywords

Criminal history criminal record ethics of care/care ethics nursing nursing ethics prisoner professional ethics Ruddick theory/philosophical perspectives topic areas

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Crampton

. Caring for prisoners-patients: a quandary for registered nurses. J Perianesth Nurs 2014; 29(2): 107–118.

White

Jordens

Kerridge

. Contextualising professional ethics: the impact of the prison context on the practices and norms of health care practitioners. J Bioeth Inq 2014; 11: 333–345.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Worker safety in your hospital, https://www.osha.gov/dsg/hospitals/understanding_problem.html (2016, accessed 22 July 2016).

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Preventing workplace violence in healthcare, https://www.osha.gov/dsg/hospitals/workplace_violence.html (2016, accessed 22 July 2016).

Arnetz

Hamblin

Essenmacher

. Understanding patient-to-worker violence in hospitals: a qualitative analysis of documented incident reports. J Adv Nurs 2015; 71(2): 338–348.

Iliopoulos

. Foucault’s notion of power and current psychiatric practice. Philos Psychiatr Psychol 2012; 19(1): 49–58.

Rawls

. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Gadow

. Restorative nursing: toward a philosophy of postmodern punishment. Nurs Philos 2003; 4: 161–167.

Iseminger

Levitt

Kirk

. Healing during existential moments: the “art” of nursing practice. Nurs Clin North Am 2009; 44: 447–459.

10.

Stickley

Freshwater

. The art of listening in the therapeutic relationship. Ment Health Prac 2006; 9(5): 12–18.

11.

Noddings

. Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.

12.

Noddings

. The language of care ethics. Knowledge Quest 2012; 40: 52–56.

13.

Ruddick

. Care as labor and relationship. In: Held

Haber

Halfon

(eds) Norms and values: essays on the work of Virginia Held. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, pp. 3–25.

14.

Friedman

. What are friends for? Feminist perspectives on personal relationships and moral theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.