Confidentiality issues are very important in medical practice. It raises legal, moral and ethical issues.
What then is confidentiality? Simply it has to do with secrecy or privacy of the patient. In medicine, it has to do with assuming secrecy or privacy of information acquired during DOCTOR/PATIENT relationship and other health worker/patient relationship.
It is a considerable ethical obligation to the health worker- doctors, nurses, record staff and even hospital billing staff to ensure patient’s record don’t get into hand or end up being used detrimentally.
Sustaining confidentiality is very important considering the stigma attached to certain diseases like HIV/AIDS, psychiatric illness and epilepsy etc, leaked health information can hurt a patient’s employment and social status. It can even be a tool for blackmail in the wrong hand.
A great responsibility is therefore in the hand of health workers and health institutions to preserve health information gotten from patients.
General hospitals and other health institutions handle confidentiality as thus: patients information belong to the patients while the health record folders, case notes and doctors clerking belong to the hospital. Many hospitals don’t even allow the patients to carry the folders in a bid to protect the information thereby protecting the patient.
Certain information can’t be release without the patient consent while certain individual can’t get the person’s information without consent of the patient.
In one of our future issue: Confidentiality in health would be extensively dealt with. Keep a date with us.
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