Patient-Physician Relationship and Confidentiality

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Our health department collects data and statistics from all community members who visit our health care. It then uses this data to address not only the community but also the medical professionals concerning the general health conditions of the community from time to time. This data is also used to restructure as well as prioritize the health policies of health care. It is through these processes that the department comes up with a thoroughly deliberated approach on how health care should dispense quality services to the community. It is via these records that we find out which medical sectors require more personnel and of which qualifications. Therefore, the collection of customers’ information is an inevitable process (Thornton, 2001).

During the process of collecting such information, customers’ informed consent is always our priority. Informed consent refers to a simple but detailed conversation between a medical practitioner and the patient which targets the patient’s agreement to undergo a given medical intervention that is yet to be or has been diagnosed (Diez-Roux, 2000). Since all of our health physicians are highly trained in their respective medical fields, they ensure that they are fully prepared to adequately carry out such discussions with patients and confirm the receipt of the message.

This is aimed at ensuring that the patient is undoubtedly aware of all the medical procedures that the physician might decide to conduct and the possible future consequences. Beside thorough and detailed physician-customer discussions, we also have well written and comprehensive forms that customers fill for the physician to gauge their consent. We promptly adhere to our work ethics.

Some patients could not be in a position to provide informed consent due to impairments to their judgment ability. Such impairments would include immaturity, stress, being in a coma, severe intoxication and mental illness. In such cases, another individual, for example, the patient’s parent or guardian will be authorized to give consent on his/her behalf. Our health care team will strive to obtain assent from the patient whenever possible. In situations where decisions involved are bound to cause distress to the patient that is hard to tackle, our health care physicians focus on retaining the patient’s hope. They then assess the consent via the well-established follow-up plan we have at the health care.

The essential way of building a good relationship between patients and health care physicians is through protecting their confidentiality. Communication of necessary details between the physicians and/or health systems is required for quality patient care. Unfortunately, advances in technology, especially the internet and computerization of the patients’ information has invited breaches of patients’ confidential health issues.

These incidences have resulted in restrictive policies concerning the information of our patients and access to such records that contain patients’ information. These policies have triggered varied views as most argue that they are likely to ruin efforts in protecting the health of the community. They have also spurred deliberations on an appropriate procedure to leverage community health protection to private concerns (Myers, Frieden, Bherwani, & Henning, 2008). Like health care, we highly value the rights of all patients and uphold the need to protect individual details from intruders. According to Hermann Biggs, a public health champion in New York City, confidentiality is only assured through acceptable reporting on public health (Callréus, 2013).

Our department will infringe on the privacy of our patients so as not to put community health and privacy at risk. Many patients become reluctant to disclose their health details because of the impacts posed in case of a breach. Some fear being relieved of their duties, being stigmatized and discriminated against. Therefore, most of them go to the extent of avoiding medical care, a decision likely to ruin their health. This can too affect the health of the community at large when some patients, suffering from contagious diseases, avoid treatment. We will hence heighten security so as to encourage many to seek treatment, just as Title 42, Part 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations provides (Callréus, 2013).

Now that this issue has come to our department’s attention, I hereby assure you all that we are going to employ appropriate measures to suppress it and enact preventive measures thereafter to put it under control. These methods will include heightened security of our databases, education to both patients and health care providers on the importance of confidentiality, and tough policies regarding the patients’ privacy.

We will carry out a background analysis of all medical staff which handles sensitive details, run such information on isolated networks with no data ports. We will ensure access to rooms where confidential details of our patients will be limited to only authorized personnel. We will put in place CCTV surveillance of the room in which sensitive information of our patients is stored. Lastly, we come up with a confidentiality policy to direct all of our personnel on the required practices.

Discussion on whether a medical practitioner is to blame for the failure to disclose details of a diagnostic procedure to a patient

Patients are to be protected from foreign invasions to their bodies. Patients are the ones to make ultimate decisions as far as their medical care is concerned. It is for this reason that all medical practitioners should disclose all the health details about the patients. Any diagnostic procedure to be undertaken on a patient is associated with some facts as well as impacts on the future health of the patient. Therefore, all the recommendations made by the medical practitioner should be comprehensively revealed to the victim (Thornton, 2000).

Courts recognize that a practitioner violates work ethics if s/he fails to disclose the method of treatment s/he has chosen. Besides, a physician must recommend what reasonable and equivalent physicians would prescribe if they handled the same patient. For these reasons, I vehemently concur with the courts that the physician is the one to be held responsible for any anomaly resulting after a patient undergoes a given medical treatment.

However, a plaintiff should vividly prove that the proximate cause of his/her medical anomaly was due to the physician’s failure to avail and reveal all the details concerning his/her health status. In addition, the victim should display that his/her consent to the kind of treatment the physician offered, would hardly have taken place had the physician informed him/her of all the necessary details. This means that the basis the courts take to give verdict determines the nature of the outcome. A patient-based standard will definitely result in a verdict different from the one where a physician-based standard would have been used.

Ultimately, physicians have undergone studies on how to handle patients. They are aware of most of the health issues that face patients. Therefore, they should explicitly inform patients of the impacts such issues have on their health. They should inform them of the diagnostic procedures needed.

References

Callréus, T. (2013). Pharmacovigilance and public health ethics. Pharmaceutical Medicine, 27(3), 157 – 164.

Diez-Roux, A.V. (2000). Multilevel analysis in public health research. Annual Review of Public Health, 21(1), 171 – 192.

Myers, J., Frieden, T.R., Bherwani, K.M., & Henning, K.J. (2008). Ethics in public health research, privacy and public health at risk, public health confidentiality in the digital age. American Journal of Public Health, 98(5), 793 – 801.

Thornton, R.G. (2000). Informed consent. Proceedings, 13(2), 187 – 190.

Thornton, R.G. (2001). New federal standards for privacy of individual health information. Proceedings, 14(2), 191 – 197.

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Patient-Physician Relationship and Confidentiality

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