Patient confidentiality: when can a breach be justified?

Sounding the alarm. Knowing when to notify patients of a data breach can be unclear.

The laptop was missing. Previously stationed in the EEG department of NorthShore University HealthSystem, the laptop had been connected to equipment used by staff to treat patients. Just who took the laptop from the Evanston, IL-based facility—an employee, patient, or visitor—was not known. What was known was that 250 patients had personal information stored on the machine, including their name...

Can claims for 'wrongful life' be justified?

The authors reject Joseph Fletcher's arguments that the choice to procreate is a privilege and that parents may be responsible in certain circumstances for producing genetically defective children. They argue instead that procreation is a conditional right, but nonetheless conclude that parents may be held responsible for the "wrongful life" of genetically damaged offspring based on the legal ...

Can Knowledge Be Justified True Belief?

Knowledge was traditionally held to be justified true belief. This paper examines the implications of maintaining this view if justication is interpreted algorithmically. It is argued that if we move sufficiently far from the small worlds to which Bayesian decision theory properly applies, we can steer between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of skepticism only by explicitly building i...

Active euthanasia: can it be justified?

Decisions to breach confidentiality when prisoners report violations of institutional rules.

As a general principle, standards of care in prisons, including patient confidentiality, should strive to be the same as those in the open community. This is the position taken by a recent American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on jails and prisons and in an earlier APA position statement. Accordingly, confidentiality can be breached when inmates are at risk of serious harm to themse...