Ethical considerations of video monitoring psychiatric patients in seclusion and restraint

Video monitoring of psychiatric patients in seclusion and restraint is reviewed from ethical and legal perspectives. Video monitoring invades privacy beyond patient expectations for routine hospital care and has the potential to harm personal dignity. The potential benefit of patient safety through monitoring must be balanced with the potential harm of monitoring to provide ethical justification. Because involuntary monitoring places patients in a position of extreme vulnerability to personal exposure, clinicians are obligated to protect these patients. A case illustrating problems with video monitoring along with recommendations for ethical use of video monitoring are presented in this article.