I mean I can tell my lawyer if I committed a crime and it’s attorney client privilege. I can tell my wife or husband and we are protected not to squeal on each other. Same thing about telling a priest it is privileged information. How come a nurse or doctor is required to report it. I mean non of the above are life and death but a confession from a patient should be privileged in my opinion why is it not? Like if a person says they use meth or whatever, we really don’t report it. But if he get’s in a wreck and only causes himself or herself injury why are we to report it to the police does not HIPPA cover this?
A lawyer is considered an extension of your (legal) self. The reason is that if your lawyer can be compelled to talk about your private communications, then a client won’t actually get a fair trial, as they needed that lawyer aware of everything to defend them properly, but if prosecution could just call your lawyer to the stand and go “did they do it?”, no one would tell lawyers anything incriminating.
Your spouse is also considered to be part of you, legally. You have a right to confide in them, they are part of your life.
Same for a priest, many religions require confessions and have religious consequences for not confessing or a priest telling what they heard. The right for them protects them from being forced to break religious rules, although notably this one doesn’t exist everywhere.
Nurses and doctors are covered in the same way, actually. Revealing your medical information improperly is a HIPAA violation.
Aside from spousal privilege, all of these relate to their job. Your lawyer defends you, your priest hears your confessions, your doctors and nurses treat you. If you tell your priest about your heart condition and your lawyer about your blaspheming against god and your doctor about that time you murdered a man back in '03, then no privilege protects you at all.
That last paragraph, especially, explains it so well. It’s very important to know to whom, when, where, why, how, and to what extent one should talk about a particular subject.
That seems like a lot of work. I’ll just continue not telling anybody anything.
That’s probably better than the opposite extreme, although I think most of us learn to filter intuitively for appropriateness over time. Having said that, I feel like telling medics your symptoms and your attorney anything they ask generally covers most of the bases.
What if I told the man I murdered in '03 that I blasphemed my wife to my lawyer, and that’s why I murdered him, to keep him from telling my priest?
In that case, you should ask Tarantino for points on the back end.
I would have guessed Shyamalan, but a Tarantino interpretation of The Sixth Sense would be interesting.
Then you’ve killed the man you told and the court will have a terribly difficult time producing him, but if they manage it, you’ll have to marry him to apply any kind of privilege.
Is that you, Tim Burton?
It depends on whether the man you murdered in '03 was a doctor
He was my therapist.
The sequel to The Sixth Sense that nobody asked for.
The lesser known of the hippocratic oaths: Nurses can do a little harm. As a treat.
First, do no harm. Second, do a bit of harm.
There is a conflict between confidentiality and mandatory reporting. The ideal of confidentiality is that anything you say in private that you don’t want recorded or repeated should be kept private. The ideal of mandatory reporting is that if anyone finds out about a crime a person has committed, it should be reported for the sake of justice.
The solution is that we limit both of them in different situations. Confidentiality is generally limited to those who have a crucial and necessary role in keeping information confidential. In other words, those positions or professions that are deemed essential by society and which require confidentiality to function properly. That’s lawyers, medical professionals, and in some cases, religious professionals.
Mandatory reporting is generally limited to those who are in a position that allows access to vulnerable individuals. That’s teachers, social workers, police officers, and sometimes also medical professionals or religious professionals.
Because those include some of the same categories, the law gets very specific and sometimes even contradictory in different jurisdictions.
Doctor - patient confidentiality is a thing.
That’s about your medical conditions you’ve seen them about though, not secrets, right? Also might not apply to nurses.
Not being a dick or looking for a fight. Where do you live at? The only thing I know of remotely close is a doctor can not talk to other people about your condition (though they regularly do). Or they can “read between lines” and we know what they are talking about and whom. I tried my damnedest to live by the do no harm philosophy. Like the Hippocratic oath says. May be the greedy part of me but I like to sleep at night.
Because nurses and doctors aren’t lawyers, and have different concerns that justify and limit anti-testimonial privilege.
To illustrate, consider who should do what if a person approaches them while covered in someone else’s blood and viscera.
- the spouse and should be free to offer comfort and advice in what was definitely a traumatic situation.
- the priest should be able to take confession without regard to temporal concern.
- the lawyer will need to start preparing a criminal defense
- the doctor and nurse should be able to heal their wounds, but also really should wonder if there’s someone else out there in need
I absolutely won’t defend the current system where patients need to be lawyers to know when they should lie to their doctors. Or where the CDC can’t say *warning, DomeGuy has COVID!" but the DA can demand my doctor tattle on my prescriptions.
None of those are absolute.
If your bankruptcy lawyer discover you committed murder they don’t have to keep silent (I’m not sure what the law or bar ethics rules are, but probably they need to report it - they don’t have the right skills to defend you). Asking a bankruptcy lawyer for a referral to a murder defense lawyer would probably be protected though - even if they don’t know one.
A priest can keep silent or not. Different religions have different rules. In some you confessed and their job is to pray for your spiritual forgiveness and they won’t say anything. In others they will say doing your time (turn yourself in) is the right action. In some cases they can make a judgement call of what to apply.
A doctor cannot talk about your health conditions to random people. However they can talk to those with a need to know, if your condition is criminal then those people may get a need to know.
In a perfect world you’d have gotten this explained thoroughly for your local jurisdiction as part of your registration requirements.
Doctors, lawyers, and priests have professional expectations to keep things secret, but if there’s ongoing harm to others, or certain crimes (child molestation, murder, etc.), they will report it.
It isn’t considered to be in the public interest to make medical confidentiality the equivalent of legal confidentiality.
