Instead of trying to reduce the number of people who have access to a patient's medical record by quarantining information, hospitals should explain the current meaning of confidentiality to patients as part of the informed consent process.
A requirement to uphold the confidentiality of information shared in the physician-patient relationship is a central tenet of medical professionalism that, while at risk and undermined in various ways in modern medicine, has been consistently endorsed from the time of Hippocrates.
Because maintaining strict confidentiality is often untenable, or even illegal, determining the extent of protections in the postmortem context ultimately entails a weighing of the various interests at stake.
Philip Zachariah, MD, Gregory S. Blaschke, MD, MPH, and Melissa Weddle, MD, MPH
Physicians should support the sexual orientation of LBGT youth while educating and developing a trusting relationship with the parents, who may pose religious objections and favor ineffective and potentially harmful therapies.
Eric Trupin, PhD, Sarah Cusworth Walker, PhD, Hathaway Burden, and Mary Helen Roberts
Mental health diversion programs show promise in effectively addressing the treatment needs of youth with mental health and substance use disorders who come in contact with the justice system.
This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.