The Ethics Of Confidentiality In Medical Practice

I. INTRODUCTION

There are many definitions about Confidentiality and this word is commonly linked together with trust, respect of autonomy and privacy. One of the classic definitions; Confidentiality is a pledge or agreement that any off-the-record information shared by the patient will be protected against disclosure to a third-party, unless permitted by the patient, or in some circumstances, guided by the law or the primary involved parties. The confidential information is strictly discussed among health care providers only. The ethics of Confidentiality is highly recommended in the medical field. It is the duty of all healthcare personnel, who has access to the medical records of the patient, to keep the data confidential from people who have no relation to the patients.

The focal point of this research is to distinguish the significance of confidentiality in the clinical settings and the potential impacts when the breach of confidentiality occurred. This research will discuss the potential harm of the Confidentiality in the clinical settings. This will discuss the basic laws and guiding principles that would help the readers to gain ideas on how to keep the high standard of safeguarding the information. In addition to that, we will discuss a few scenarios of confidentiality issue in terms of Ethics, Legal and social perspective. At the end of the research, there is a sample form of what must appear in the Confidentiality form to clearly view the basic information