Essay
Patient Confidentiality
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This essay provides for ethical and legal debates for which the principle of patient confidentiality shall be forgone.
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this essay seeks to address the extent in which the confidences of patients isprotected under the current laws of patient confidentiality. For the purpose of this
essay, the position in law will first be provided in order to provide an evaluation on
the opposing positions for and against the protection of patients’ confidentiality. It is
argued that the current position of law, does not protect the confidentiality of patients
adequately, however this is balanced by the justifications which will be addressed
below.
Patient confidentiality as described in Campbell, refers to information which
are expected to be kept confidential. And as provided under the Hippocratic oath, “…
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or outside my
profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I
will keep secret and will never reveal…” it is the duty of medical practitioners to
respect the confidentiality of patients. This is well established in the case of Hunter v
Mann where it was stated that “the doctor is under a duty not to [voluntarily] disclose,
without the consent of the patient, information which he, the doctor, has gained in his
professional capacity.”, and also by Lord Philips MR in Ashworth Security Hospital v
MGN where it was stated that It is well settled that there is an abiding obligation of
confidentiality as between doctor and patient.
It can be safely inferred that the purpose of protecting the confidentiality of
patients is based on Art 8 of ECHR which comprises of two limbs:
1. the respect for privacy; and
2. the autonomy of patients.
As it is the fundamental principle that patients are autonomous and should not have
their information disclosed without their consent, as it would be a clear breach of the
aforementioned Article. However, as stated by Herring, ‘It must be admitted that the
law in this area is not very satisfactory.’ This is due to the fact that often times,
confidential information are disclosed on two fundamental justifications which will be
addressed in the next part.
It is identified that the justifications for the disclosure is threefold, firstly for the
best interests of the patient, secondly for the interests of the health care
professionals as it would not be possible for health care institutions to function
efficiently if patients’ confidentiality is undisclosed, this was further identified by
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