Postgrad Med J 2001;77:443-444
( July )
Review
Ethical, professional, and legal obligations in clinical
practice: a series of discussion topics for postgraduate medical
education Topic 4:
confidentiality
D M Gore
Craigavon Area
Hospital, Northern Ireland
Correspondence to: Mr
D M Gore, Department of Surgery, University of Liverpool, 5th Floor UCD
Building, Daulby Street, Liverpool L69 3GA, UK
dmgore@liverpool.ac.uk
Submitted 24 May
2000;
Accepted 2 August 2000
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
Introduction |
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 . . . [Full text of this article]
