Q A PATIENT died unexpectedly. As I was gathering his belongings as part of post-mortem care, the family asked me to unlock his phone using his biometric authentication so they could retrieve messages. I didn’t feel comfortable with this request. What’s the ethical guidance here?

A In the immediate aftermath of an unexpected death, families often reach for anything that might offer comfort, clarity, or connection. A request to unlock a patient’s phone may come from a place of deep grief. Yet for nurses, the ethical and professional boundaries surrounding such a request are firm.

The Code of Ethics for Nurses (Code) provides clear guidance. Provision 3 states that nurses must “promote, advocate for, and protect the rights, health, and safety of the patient,” which includes safeguarding privacy and confidentiality. This obligation doesn’t end at death (codeofethics.ana.org). A patient’s personal information, whether digital or not, remains protected.

A smartphone isn’t simply personal belonging. It contains private communications, financial information, health data, and sensitive content. Unlocking it would require accessing information the patient never consented to share. In Digital Death, Digital Assets and Post-Mortem Privacy, Harbinja highlights legal cases in which families sued for access to their loved one’s digital assets after death. In many of these cases, a companies’ terms of service and privacy policies continued to protect the individual’s personal information, underscoring how strongly privacy rights persist even after death. If you obliged the family’s request, you would violate confidentiality, breach professional boundaries, and expose yourself and your institution to legal risk.

Several provisions in the Code clearly outline why nurses shouldn’t unlock a patient’s phone in this situation. Respect for human dignity (Provision 1) requires honoring a patient’s right to privacy even after death. Accessing a phone risks revealing information the patient may have intentionally kept private. Professional boundaries (Provision 2) also come into play, as unlocking or manipulating a patient’s personal device falls outside the nurse’s role and scope of responsibility. Confidentiality and trust (Provision 3) further obligate nurses to safeguard personal information, a duty that continues beyond the patient’s life and can’t be transferred to family members without explicit consent. Finally, integrity (Provision 5) calls on nurses to uphold personal and professional standards even when facing emotional pressure from grieving loved ones. Together, these provisions make clear that although compassion for the family remains essential, unlocking the phone would violate the ethical commitments nurses are bound to uphold.

A compassionate response might sound like this: “I’m very sorry for your loss. I understand how important it is for you to access his messages. Unfortunately, I’m not permitted to unlock or access a patient’s personal device. What I can do is help connect you with the appropriate hospital representative who can guide you on next steps.”

This approach acknowledges the family’s grief while maintaining ethical and legal obligations.

Nurses must balance compassion with professional responsibility. Families may seek access to a loved one’s phone for understandable reasons, but nurses can’t unlock or access personal devices. Upholding confidentiality after death stands as a core ethical duty. Honoring that duty protects both the patient and the integrity of the nursing profession.

Your discomfort was understandable and ethically appropriate. Your instinct to pause—and ultimately decline—was exactly what the Code calls for.

Response by Kara Curry, MA, RN, HEC-C, ANA Center for Ethics and Human Rights’ senior policy and ethics advisor

American Nurse Journal. 2026; 21(6). Doi: 10.51256/ANJ062646

Reference

Harbinja E. Digital Death, Digital Assets and Post-mortem Privacy: Theory, Technology and the Law. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press; 2022.