Answer:
When handling calls from patients, employee should always remember that the licensed practitioner is legally responsible or liable for the information given by the employee to an employee over the phone.
Step-by-step explanation:
Hippocratic Oath is an oath taken by physicians to observe medical ethics. Such an oath is traditionally incorporated into graduation ceremonies of medical schools, intended to inspire the ethics of the medical profession based on the writing of Hippocrates.
One of the oldest binding documents in history, the Oath written by Hippocrates is still held sacred by physicians: treat the ill to the best of one's ability, to preserve a patient's privacy, to teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on.
Under common Law,
The overriding principle for the duty of confidence stems from the premise that ‘he who has received information in confidence shall not take unfair advantage of it’. Hence, confidentiality is an obligation of conscience. The following are important points:
- Information is not confidential if it is already in the public domain.
- There is no duty of confidentiality with regard to information that is useless information or trivia.
- The duty to respect confidentiality is not absolute and can be overridden by the public interest need for disclosure.
Thus, it is the nature of the information and the circumstances in which it is disclosed that create the duty of confidentiality.
Another dynamic which imposes confidence but with conditions is the doctor - patient relationship.
The doctor–patient relationship is one in which information divulged by patients imposes a duty of confidence. Please see the case between
W v Edgell.