What do you understand by the word confidentiality?

Question

What do you understand by the word confidentiality?

Answer 1

confidentiality to me means that if u go to a doctor or nurse and you have some sort of say STI , it would mean to keep it confidential from other 3rd parties e.g. parents, friends, colleagues , teachers or tutors, the information should be held for important people who should be informed.

Answer 2

it means that whatever is disclosed between those present in a setting or meeting that is confidential will remain secret and known only by those present and the information will not be shared with anyone unless:

a child is at risk of harm

there is talk of major illegal activity such as fraud, murder etc, or conspiracy to do one of these activities.

if an individual poses a serious and genuine threat themself or others.

these get outs are there obviously to protect people. therefore a discusiion between a doctor and patient would not be passed on without explicit consent of the patient, unless that patient had said they were going to kill their brother or something, and if the doctor thought this was genuine they would be obliged to share that information eg with police and psychiatrists.

doctors/police etc will usually have a clause so that information may be shared between professionals in the context of work where the need arises.

a strictly confidential conversation medical notes or letters etc may be used in a court case without prior consent if it is deemed necessary to ensure justice prevails.

i hope that helps

Answer 3

This is a very "vexed" term.  It in no way implies privileged.  Something may be confidential (requested to be maintained as covert between or among parties) but it means very little in the legal world.  And that, is the corporate world in which we live.  There are basically only three types of privilege, between a person (male or female) and a priest, between a person and his/her lawyer, between a patient and his/her doctor.  Nothing else is privileged.  And, if the lawyer has reason to believe that his/her client may do harm to someone, he, or she, may break that privilege (but are not required to do so).

Confidentiality usually refers to something that is meant to be kept between or among certain individuals.  Limited access.

Answer 4

Apparently nothing.  Or at least I am not aware of what is and what isn't confidential.  If someone tells me something about someone else that might not be nice at all, though true, I don't know that I am supposed to not tell anyone else.

If my friend tells me something that they don't want me to repeat, then I guess they would tell me, but then I would have to keep a mental list of what I CAN tell others and what I CAN'T tell others.  And that's just too much to keep up with.

So, I figure that people shouldn't tell me anything that they don't want other people to know, or more precisely, things that they don't want coming back to them from the person that they are talking about.  So, the confidentiality needs to stop at them, and not at me or further down the line.  Right?

I am sure you can tell that I am not addressing the question of the LEGAL use of the word, "confidentiality" or "confidential".  But then you didn't ask for that.  However, I would think that the idea of the information not going any further than one step, or to one person or file, would apply just as it does in the way informal confidentiality applies.

Answer 5

For your eyes or ears only... between you and that other individual the confidentiality was agreed upon!