Mr. L. is a 23-year-old homosexual patient Hospitalized in a large medical center on the East Coast. He is seriously ill with an AIDS related disease. He wants to see his parents before he dies. When he left home (rural Montana) at the age of 18, his parents had no knowledge of his lifestyle, nor have they seen him since that time. He asks the medical staff to respond to his parent’s questions regarding his illness as “some form of leukemia”. After being with her son for three days and aware of the fact he is dying, the mom asks, “Does he have AIDS?” Should the patient’s right to privacy and confidentiality take priority over the parent’s right to the truth?

The issue of confidentiality between immediate families is a controversial issue, and has been for some time. There are not too many options in this dilemma, either to tell the parents of not to tell. Legally you have an obligation to the patient to keep his confidentiality, if he is not a minor. Ethically there are “4 element principles on respecting a person: autonomy, truth telling, confidentiality, and fidelity”(Darr 20-21). Although in this case even if confidentiality was maintained fo

Jameton, Andrew. Nursing Practice: the Ethical Issues. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1984.

Curtin, Leah, M. Josephine Flaherty. Nursing Ethics: Theories and Pragmatics. Bowie: A Prentice-Hall Publications company, 1982.

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