Immediate aims of confidentiality are to: 1. Facilitate the sharing of sensitive information with the goal of helping the patient 2. Exclude unauthorized people from such information 3. Discern need to know information from mere interest when deciding what to share.
Confidentiality serves as one cornerstone for the solid foundation of a trusting health professional-patient relationship that should be built
AMA principles of medical ethics states that:- a physician shall respect the rights of patients, of colleagues and of other health professionals and shall safeguard patient confidences within the constrains of the law. This provides a conflict when a physician knows that some secret may be harmful for the patient and yet are bound to keep it.
Breaking Confidence- Legal exceptions to the standard of practice that confidences must be kept, except with the patient’s consent or at the patient’s request to break it include * An emergency in which keeping the confidence will harm the patient * Patient is incompetent or incapacitated and a third party needs to be informed for decision making for the patient * Third parties are at a risk for harm (eg. Sexually transmitted diseases, child or other abuses) * Request