PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Spruiell, Graham Lindley AU - Hauser, Mark J. AU - Commons, Michael Lamport AU - Drogin, Eric Y. TI - Clinicians Imagine a Patient's View: Rating Disclosures of Confidential Information DP - 2011 Sep 01 TA - Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online PG - 379--386 VI - 39 IP - 3 4099 - http://jaapl.org/content/39/3/379.short 4100 - http://jaapl.org/content/39/3/379.full SO - J Am Acad Psychiatry Law2011 Sep 01; 39 AB - Consent to disclosure of confidential information is a cornerstone of the clinician-patient relationship; however, changes in the legal, regulatory, and technological landscape affecting patient confidentiality have brought increasing conflict between ethics-based commitments and the realities of practice. In this pilot study, 119 mental-health clinicians completed a questionnaire that measured levels of disapproval of disclosures of confidential information to various third parties. Clinicians were asked to respond as though they were patients whose information was to be disclosed. Clinicians, taking a patient's perspective, most disapproved of disclosures to anyone who wanted the information and to entities that marketed pharmaceutical, medical, or other products. They were progressively less uncomfortable with disclosures to family members, for educational use without consent but with de-identification, to insurance companies, to pharmacists, to journals, for educational purposes in training other clinicians, and for research. They were least disapproving of disclosures to other clinicians. Based on this initial study of clinicians taking a patient's perspective, clinicians will do well to inform patients about disclosure practices at least as fully as they themselves would want to be informed.