Real-Life Decision Making
You are a Nuclear medicine technologist working in a clinic.
You perform a series of tests on people that the physicians send to you. The
test results help the physicians diagnose conditions like Alzheimer's disease,
heart disease and cancer.
Today, you are surprised to see that your patient is someone you know.
Britney was a classmate when you studied nuclear medicine technology. She
is working at a different clinic. She tells you that she has developed an
irregular heartbeat. Sometimes an irregular heartbeat is nothing to worry
about. In other cases, it means serious damage. Only tests can tell which
it is.
Britney's doctor has ordered a number of medical tests to determine whether
there is heart damage. You are to perform one of these tests.
You give her an injection of a radiopharmaceutical. You know that the radiopharmaceutical
will collect in certain tissues and organs of your patient's body. These organs
then display levels of radioactivity. If the radiation in a certain area is
higher or lower than expected, it means there is damage or disease.
After administering the radiopharmaceutical, you position Britney to start
a gamma scintillation camera, or scanner. This scanner takes pictures of the
radioactivity as it collects in the various organs and tissues. The images
display in a computer screen. You save them to show them to the physician.
As you watch the images on the computer screen, you are sad to see that Britney's
heart is showing more radiation than expected.
You are not a doctor and you do not diagnose diseases. Still, you have
a good idea what it means. Your classmate might have a problem with her heart.
After you complete the test, Britney asks you what the tests showed. You
both know that you are not permitted to tell her this information. Instead,
you must compile a report and send it to her doctor. Her doctor makes a diagnosis
and explains the findings to his patient.
You remind your patient that it is completely against the rules for you
to tell her anything. Your classmate argues that she is a nuclear medicine
technologist herself. She understands what the tests mean.
"It's not like I'm a stranger," she argues. "We're classmates."
When you refuse again, Brittney tells you that she will not see her doctor
for the test results until next week. In the meantime, she wants to participate
in a 10-mile run to raise money for charity. She wants to know the results
so she can decide if the run will be safe for her.
"If you don't tell me the results, I'll assume nothing is wrong and I will
do the run," she says. You think that the run might be dangerous for her until
her doctor finds out if something is wrong. What do you do?