Confidentiality in mediCine

Confidentiality in medicine ensures respect for the patient’s privacy and improves health care by en-abling the patient to trust the health professional with very personal information. Confidentiality may be breached if required in terms of the law, such as in the case of gunshot wounds, child or other abuse and communicable diseases. Other justifiable ex-ceptions to the confidentiality rule are in an emer-gency situation, where the patient is incompetent or incapacitated, and in the case of psychiatrically ill patients who need to be committed to hospital. The final reason to breach confidentiality is to protect third parties, whether this is concern for the safety of a specific person or in the public interest. Two ex-amples of the latter are the Tarasoff case and HIV