Describe all of the permissible options available to Jackie’s therapist for responding to the subpoena.

Writing Assignment C

FACTUAL BACKGROUND:
Nurse Jackie is a Registered Nurse from northern Maine. She has just returned to Maine after volunteering in a clinic in a west African nation struggling with the Ebola epidemic. She lives with her boyfriend. Her parents are alive and live in Bangor. She has five brothers and sisters, all of whom live in Maine.
Ebola is a contagious disease that is often, but not always, fatal. The first symptom of infection is a fever. According to the best medical evidence, Ebola is not contagious until after a fever appears. If no fever has appeared in twenty-one days, the person exposed to Ebola is considered to be Ebola-free. Once health authorities have evidence of infection, the standard procedure is to quarantine the patient until the disease runs its course.
When Nurse Jackie returned to the United States, she was tested and found to have a normal temperature. She returned to her home in northern Maine. The Governor of Maine asked her to remain in her home for three weeks because he was not convinced that the medical professionals knew enough about Ebola. Nurse Jackie refused, but agreed to have a nurse take her temperature twice a day and to report those temperatures to the Maine Center for Disease Control. She also agreed that if she were to develop a fever, she would consent to a quarantine. Nurse Jackie continued to take walks, ride her bike, and be outside, although she avoided going to the store or being in crowded public places. She also saw a mental health counselor who came to her home twice a week.
The Governor brought a court action seeking to keep Nurse Jackie quarantined for three weeks. During that court action, the State sent a subpoena duces tecum to Jackie’s therapist requesting her records.
While the court action was pending, Nurse Jackie lost control of her bicycle and was hit by a car. She is now hospitalized in a coma with a head injury. She is being fed through a feeding tube, but she is currently able to breathe on her own.
The doctors recommend brain surgery to restore Jackie to consciousness. The doctors advise the surgery is very risky and has only a 30% chance of being
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successful. Without the surgery, Jackie will live, but the doctors predict that she will not regain consciousness, at least not in the foreseeable future. No one has yet decided whether Jackie is in a persistent vegetative state, although that diagnosis is a possibility in the future. Jackie does not have a living will or a medical power of attorney.
Jackie’s boyfriend has decided that he does not want to make this decision. Her parents disagree about the surgery. Her father thinks it is worth the risk; her mother says no. All of Jackie’s siblings agree with their dad that the surgery is Jackie’s best chance of regaining consciousness and is therefore worth the risk.
THE QUESTIONS – FOUR (4) PARTS
PART I (1 point): What are the interests of Jackie, the public, Jackie’s relatives
with regard to Nurse Jackie’s exposure to the Ebola virus?

Public at large not spreading the desease, containment public safty

PART II (5 points): Assume for this part that Jackie has not yet had her bicycle accident. Assume that the State will provide appropriate procedural due process in its court action. Analyze whether the United States Constitution permits the State of Maine to force Nurse Jackie into quarantine when she does not have a fever.

No pursuant to section 1983 civil action for deprivation of rights which states every person who, under color of any statue, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any state or territory or the District of Columbia subjects or causes to be subject any citizen of the United states or any other person within that jurisdiction there off the deprivation of any rights privileges immunities secure by the constitution and laws. So they would be breaking the law at this point by violating her constitutional rights but they can also hide behind qualified immunity.

PART III ( 2 points): Describe all of the permissible options available to Jackie’s therapist for responding to the subpoena.
The permissible options that you have as a therapist to report someone that may harm themselves or harm others so in this case this could be looked at as harming others so the would have to be a mandatory reporting but the therapist also has the obligation to let her client know that she has to do so

PART IV (5 points): Assume for this part that Nurse Jackie has had her bicycle accident and is still in a coma. Analyze the following:
(a) Who is “reasonably available” as a surrogate to make a decision regarding the brain surgery and in what order of priority? (2 points)
Guardian at lium

(b) Discuss in detail the possible ways that Jackie’s doctors can get a decision about Jackie’s surgery and discuss the legal authority for each possibility. (2 points)

(c) Regardless of your answer to sub-part (b) above, assume that one person is named to make medical decisions for Jackie. What decisions may that person make and what criteria should that person use? (1 point)

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