Professional confidence

Abstract

Confidentiality is considered as a value, in which deep and important interests may be held or claimed. Indeed, the profession of medicine is itself a valued interest of any civilised community. Duty to patient and duty to the community, of which the patient is one member, may be coterminous; but equally, they may not. Varying interests and disparate values are apt to create tensions, tensions which are themselves conditioned by the very way in which basic interests and values are expressed. The tension, often experienced within the area under discussion, between pragmatism and principle creates a multitude of problems for both theorist and practitioner.