Ethical, professional, and legal obligations in clinical practice: a series of discussion topics for postgraduate medical education Topic 4:confidentiality
- Craigavon Area Hospital, Northern Ireland
- Mr D M Gore, Department of Surgery, University of Liverpool, 5th Floor UCD Building, Daulby Street, Liverpool L69 3GA, UKdmgore{at}liverpool.ac.uk
- Received 24 May 2000
- Accepted 2 August 2000
This is the fourth discussion topic in a series of five dealing with ethical, professional and legal obligations of clinical practice. Junior doctors tend to lack confidence in these subjects, and thus I organised a series of informal discussions in our surgical unit on which these discussion articles are based. The sessions were prepared with reference to non-academic literature readily available from the General Medical Council (GMC) and the medical defence organisations. While our unit dealt with these issues from a surgical perspective, the obligations of clinical practice apply to all practitioners and the series could be easily modified for other clinical specialties.
Confidentiality is a primary ethical and professional duty for doctors, and most employment contracts stipulate it. There is, however, much less case law about this topic compared with matters of consent. There are certain instances where disclosure is obligatory by statute law.
The principle of confidentiality is comparable in practice to that of consent. Respect for autonomy is paramount and any disclosure must be authorised by the patient.1 If an adult patient is not legally competent then disclosure should be made on the …
