Clinical Confidentiality

The reason courts believe that doctors should keep confidences are usually alluded to in important judgments, but the emphasis placed on them differs widely. The first reason is that the courts believe that, despite there being no general privacy law, confidentiality is a basic human right. The second reason is that if doctors are not forced to keep confidences, patients will feel inhibited about offering them and this could inhibit the doctor from making a correct diagnosis.