1. Explain in your own words why patient confidentiality is essential in healthcare.

2. Reflect on your research. Share one example of a breach in patient confidentiality.

3. Describe the steps you would take to prevent the breach you described above.

Answer and Explanation:

1. Patient confidentiality is important because it allows the patient to say all the necessary and essential information for a diagnosis to be made and thus an appropriate treatment to be initiated. This is because, according to patient confidentiality, all physicians, or health professionals, are obliged not to disclose the information said by one of their patients during the consultation or treatment. This allows the patient to have the freedom to talk about their health problems, without the fear that it will be publicized.

2. Unfortunately, you did not submit the survey this question refers to. But an example of a breach of confidentiality can occur when a doctor tells his family about the legal abortion he performed on a girl who lives on the same street as him. The spread of this news could cause many problems for the girl and discourage other women who need to undergo this treatment, to seek adequate care for fear of suffering reprisals.

3. To prevent this type of thing from happening, it would be necessary for the entire team that assisted the girl to sign a disclaimer that demanded that nothing about the case be disclosed, not even in the family environment. The professional who broke this term should be legally and professionally punished.

Reflect on your research. Share one example of a breach in patient confidentiality.