Patients who use alias names - an ethical dilemma

Nurses General Nursing

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A nurse presents this situation to an ethicist:

I am a nurse-midwife. Some of my pregnant clients are illegal immigrants from Mexico who are treated under a federally financed migrant-workers' health-care program using their real names. They are sometimes employed under an alias. When they miss work for appointments or their deliveries, I'm asked to write excuses using those aliases. I would ordinarily write such an excuse, but must I refuse unless I can use a real name?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21FOB-ethicist-t.html?ref=magazine

With that stance then you wouldn't be able to treat them -- that certainly would accessory to fraud.

But I doubt that they would have informed me that they were using an alias prior to the care being rendered.

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