Medical Ethics & Patient Rights Flashcards
7 cards from real AK practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Medical Ethics & Patient Rights flashcards as text
A patient requests access to their own medical records from an AK practice. Under HIPAA, the practice must:
Answer: Provide access within 30 days of the request (with a possible 30-day extension)
HIPAA grants patients the right to access their own health records, and covered entities must respond within 30 days, with one allowed 30-day extension.
An AK practitioner notices signs of child abuse during a session with a pediatric patient. In most US states, the practitioner is legally required to:
Answer: Report the suspicion to child protective services
Healthcare practitioners are mandatory reporters in most US states and must report reasonable suspicion of child abuse to child protective services without delay.
When a patient is referred to an AK practitioner by another provider, confidentiality of information shared in the referral is governed by:
Answer: HIPAA, which allows sharing PHI for treatment purposes among providers
HIPAA permits healthcare providers to share PHI for treatment, payment, and healthcare operations (TPO) purposes without additional patient authorization.
A patient wants to use an experimental AK technique the practitioner has read about but not been trained in. The ethical response is to:
Answer: Decline and explain that practicing outside one's training violates scope of practice
Practicing techniques outside one's competence and training is an ethical and legal violation of scope of practice, regardless of patient consent.
Which best describes the ethical concept of 'therapeutic privilege'?
Answer: Withholding information from a patient because disclosure might cause harm, now widely discouraged
Therapeutic privilege historically allowed withholding information that might upset a patient, but this is now widely considered ethically problematic and inconsistent with patient autonomy.
An AK practitioner is asked to provide an expert opinion in a malpractice case. Which ethical obligation applies most directly?
Answer: Providing an honest, objective, evidence-based opinion
When serving as an expert witness, the practitioner has an ethical duty to provide truthful, objective, and evidence-based testimony rather than advocacy for either party.
A patient requests that their AK treatment notes not be shared with any other provider. The practitioner should:
Answer: Document the request and honor it except in situations where disclosure is legally required for patient safety
Practitioners must honor patient restrictions on information sharing to the extent possible, but legal and emergency obligations may override such restrictions.