Doctor-Patient Confidentiality and Malpractice

Doctor-Patient confidentiality and malpractice

Every profession has some guidelines that have to be followed. Also there are many things that have to be kept secret and confidential. Failure to do so may affect some person’s privacy and bring them under enormous mental agony. The field of medicine also has such guidelines. There are some ethics that the doctors have to follow. One of the major things is that they have to keep the records of the patients confidential. Everybody doesn’t like their problems and disabilities to be known by others. So it is the responsibility of the doctors to keep the information of their patients confidential and do not leak them out under any circumstances without the permission of the patient.

The patients can be put into a condition of mental agony and suffering if everybody comes to know about their disability. It will be like adding insult to the injury. The doctors, while passing out, take an oath named as Hippocratic Oath in which they promise not to reveal the condition of their patients to anyone unless or until they wish to do so and hence maintain the confidentiality. If a doctor breaks this, he or she can be sued in court and should pay compensation for his patient for breaking the confidentiality and hence causing mental agony. The doctors generally do this for commercial gains. By revealing this, they get money from somebody. The laws in San Antonio prevent one from doing such acts and hence they can be punished if they do so.