The Importance and Nuances of Confidentiality

According to Stanford & Connor (2014), as quoted by Hillary Clinton, “In almost every profession-whether it is law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business- people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it (p.59).
As stated in the previous quote, confidentiality is an important concept in medicine and many other different professions. In technical terms, confidentiality is the right of an individual to have personal, medical information kept private (p. 62). It is especially important in the health care profession because as a health care professional, individuals are responsible with the personal information of their clients and are obligated to keep that information from those who it does not concern.
The concept of privacy is often used interchangeably when discussing confidentiality. Privacy is a right to not be bothered. The difference between the two is that privacy is being respectful of an individual and confidentiality is being respectful of that individual’s personal information. There are times when there

Medical records and other information are not public property and the ethical thing to do is to treat it as that. There have been numerous cases where an individual would sue a company because their personal information and/or medical records were not properly secured and there was a breach. There have also been times when the breach was intentional where an employee was negligent. One example dates back to June 2014 where a retiring physician filed a complaint against her place of employment when they dumped boxes of patients’ records in her driveway (HHS Press Office,