Navigating Ethics of Physician-Patient Confidentiality: A Communication Privacy Management Analysis

Abstract

The ethics of physician-patient confidentiality is often fraught with contradictions. Privacy boundaries are not always clear, and patients can leave an interaction with their physicians feeling uncomfortable about the security of their private medical information. The best way to meet confidentiality and privacy management expectations that patients have may not be readily apparent. Without realizing it, a physician may communicate a patient's information in ways that are inconsistent with that person's perceptions of how his/her medical information should be treated. A proposed model is presented as a tool for physicians to better serve the privacy and confidentiality needs of their patients. This model depends on the communication privacy management (CPM) perspective that emerged from a 35-year research program investigating how people regulate and control information they consider private and confidential. A physician's use of this model enables the ability to establish a confidentiality pledge that can address issues in understanding the best way to communicate about privacy management with patients and more likely overcome potential negative outcomes.