Confidentiality

Doctor Responsibility

“patients have a right to expect that their personal information will be held in confidence by their doctors” - GMC, 2017

In order to maintain trust in doctors by patients.

• As healthcare information is sensitive
• Patients are vulnerable in their time of need

Principalism

• Non-maleficence - Revealing information that could lead to negative implications
• Autonomy - requires security and self determination
• Beneficence - Rare that disclosure would ever benefit a patient, so maintain confidentiality
• Justice - Fairness lies in maintaining confidentiality, patient is revealing sensitive info for doctor to be able to treat them.
• Deontological pov: Duties of confidentiality in a given case, applies to all of the similar cases → Confidentiality should be upheld.
• Utilitarian pov: Confidentiality should be maintained in general, based on assessment and consequences of not doing so.
• Virtue Ethicist: A 'Good' Doctor would ideally maintain confidentiality

Law and Regulations

• No single law pertaining to confidentiality
• Consists of multiple cases
• Uk govt summary
• Hunter v Mann - All information gained by Dr is to be protected by confidentiality