DOCTORS MUST TELL

Evening Star, Issue 19579, 10 June 1927, Page 10

DOCTORS MUST TELL

STATEMENTS BY PATIENTS NO PRIVILEGE IN LAW The question whether a conversation between a .patient and a doctor is privileged in a-court of law arose at the hearing of a case at tljc Sydney Court last week. A woman was charged with a serious offence, and a well-known member of the medical profession, who had subsequently attended her, was called as a witness for the prosecution. Constable Stinson, police prosecutor, asked the witness to state the result of his examination, and as to what defendant told him had happened to her, but the witness pleaded privilege, and pointed out that frequently doctors were only able to save the lives of patients when told the absolute truth. Such conversations, he said, were always regarded by the medical profession as strictly confidential, and not to be divulged even in a court of law. The attitude he took up was that it was not desirable in the interests of the profession that such statements should he disclosed, otherwise patients would lose confidence in the doctors, ami would ho disinclined to help them in their diagnosis by telling them the truth.

The .Magistrate. -Mr A. 11. Perry, S.M.: I' am afraid, doctor, if the police prosecutor presses the question, I will have to allow it, and if you don’t tell the truth 1 will have to send you to Long Buy.

At the request of the police prosecutor other witnesses were allowed to bo interposed, while the matter was being considered. Subsequently the doctor was recalled, and the question again put to him.

Mr C. R. Penny, who appeared for the defendant, objected to the doctor being forced to answer the question. A conversation between a patient and a doctor, ho said, was considered as sacred, and as secret as that between a penitent and a confessor, and should be treated as such. Ho would ask the doctor to adhere to his original resolution.

The Magistrate said that while no one forced a clergyman to disclose a confidence, that did not preclude a doctor from giving evidence in a court of law. If the doctor did not answer the question he must take the consequences. The doctor had his sympathy, but he could not allow that sympathy to override his interpretation of the law.

The witness, a Tier remarking that he was very sorry to have to do it, then answered the questions as put by the police prosecutor, whereupon defendant was committed for trial. Dr 11. H. Todd, secretary of the New Smith Wales branch of the British Medical Association, when questioned on the subject, stated that he was familiar with the principle of law in-volved—-that privilege in court could not bo claimed for a conversation between a doctor and patient. The B.M.A. was not concerned, he added. The matter was solely one of law.