BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY

Breach of Confidentiality

Breach of Confidentiality

Introduction

Confidentiality is the legal and ethical obligation of therapists not to reveal data about their purchasers to unauthorized individuals. Legally and ethically, therapists are bound by statute and by the profession's cipher of professional perform not to reveal information about their purchasers to unauthorized individuals.

In counseling, two kinds of confidentiality are commonly identified: content confidentiality and communicate confidentiality. Content confidentiality needs that the substance or content of the client's discussion with a counselor not be disclosed by the professional. Disclosures of confidential purchaser data to persons with no right to that data are called content breaches. Such breaches of confidentiality may result in civil liability to the therapist or licensure revocation. Contact confidentiality requires that the professional not disclose the fact that the purchaser is being glimpsed by the professional. Disclosures to an unauthorized party that the purchaser is seeing the therapist are mentioned to as communicate breaches. Although therapists often make strenuous efforts to bypass disclosures of the persona of their clients, the law usually does not address affairs of communicate confidentiality.

Ethical Decisionmaking Process

Many ethics scholars have developed models of ethical decision making or provided us with specific procedural steps enabling one to reach an ethically supported decision or course of action. In the abstract, this process is a fairly rational and logical course. In reality, ethical decision making is filled with abstractness, illogic, and even whim. Nonetheless, the following is a synthesis of these models and procedures.

Step 1: Identify the Ethical Dimensions Embedded in the Problem

In the first step of the ethical decisionmaking process, the decision maker must be able to determine if an ethical analysis is required. The decision maker must determine if there is a possible violation of an important ethical principle, societal law, or organizational standard or policy or if there are potential consequences that should be sought or avoided that emanate from an action being considered to resolve the problem.

Step 2: Collect Relevant Information

The decision maker must collect the relevant facts to continue in the ethical decisionmaking process. Related to Step 1, if an ethical principle, such as an individual's right, is in jeopardy of being violated, the decision maker should seek to gather as much information as possible about which rights are being forsaken and to what degree. A consequential focus would prompt the decision maker to attempt to measure the type, degree, and amount ...