PROFESSIONAL CONFIDENCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23109, 8 February 1937, Page 8

PROFESSIONAL CONFIDENCES

The precise terms of the measure, which the House of Commons has rejected, providing that doctors may refrain from disclosing in courts of law information that has been imparted to them in confidence by their patients are not indicated in the cable message relating to the subject. The extent, therefore, to which the Bill proposed to give legal support to the etiquette of the profession is not quite clear. That etiquette is expressed in the statement by the British Medical Journal that no doctor should voluntarily, without the patient’s consent, divulge information received by him from that patient. The principle that communications made by a patient to his medical adviser are sacred is one that merits all respect. It is a tradition of an honourable profession that it should be scrupulously observed. But it is a tradition the observance of which must be subject to one important limitation. The public policy may demand that in certain cases the rule of professional secrecy cannot and must not apply. Among medical men themselves it must be recognised that the interests of justice may necessitate a departure from the principle which ordinarily governs their practice. They owe a duty to the State, which has enrolled them on its register of practitioners, fls well as to the individual. It is hardly open to them to plead that the etiquette of their profession would justify them in protecting a criminal by a refusal to disclose information, of which he had placed them in possession, that would lead to his conviction. If (hey were to do so. they would bring themselves perilously close to the position of being accessories after the offence. The interests of the State must always be considered by them. These are of paramount importance. This, it may be confidently assumed, is the argument on which the House of Commons has rejected the view that statements made in confidence by patients to their doctors are of a character so sacred that they can in no circumstances be disclosed. On the broad grounds of public policy the argument is so powerful as to be irresistible. Nor is the acceptance of the argument really inconsistent with the principle asserted by the British Medical Journal that a doctor should not “ voluntarily.” without the patient’s consent, divulge information which he has received in confidence. It is under compulsion that a medical witness in a court of justice gives his evidence. It is a compulsion exercised by the highest authority that requires a witness to be frank

with the court. While a medical witness generally • receives every consideration from the court, he can claim no privilege that would free him from the obligation imposed on him by the oath which he has taken. But it is only when the interests of justice absolutely demand it for the protection of the community, as otherwise they might be thwarted, that it should be or required, of a doctor that he should impart information which in his professional capacity he has received from a patient.