Confidentiality, Genetic Information, and the Physician-Patient Relationship

Keeping Children’s Secrets: Confidentiality in the Physician- Patient Relationship

The Patient-physician Relationship

DURING THE 1980S, RENEWED interest in the patientphysician relationship and the availability of more sophisticated audio and video technology allowed investigators to explore medical discourse in unprecedented detail. One of the most frequently quoted studies from this period (Beckman and Frankel) suggested that patients, asked to describe their concerns by a physician, were most often redirect...

The confidentiality of patient and physician information in pharmacy prescription records.

Celebrating the patient-physician relationship.

For me the month of February is about relationships— celebrating those we love on Valentine’s Day and, for many, honouring our relationships with family members on Family Day. This leads me to reflect on the relationships I have with my patients and how important they are to the work we do together to improve their health and well-being. As in our personal relationships, the relationship we hav...

Confidentiality and sharing genetic information with relatives.

A cluster of reports in the second half of 2009 highlighted the importance of incorporating genetic developments into mainstream medicine, and recommended that the ethicolegal implications of so doing are carefully explored. A genetic test in one person can reveal information about risk of disease for relatives and can therefore have important implications for their medical management. The succ...