Hippocratic Oath and the dead

flogen

A quick question on the Hippocratic Oath for anyone here intimately familiar with it and its variants.

One of the best-known aspects of the oath is the pledge of doctor/patient confidentiality which I understand would cover things the patient tells a doctor as well as the patient's general health.

What I'm wondering is if the pledge of confidentiality extends beyond the death of a patient or is it considered ethical for a doctor to reveal something about a patient when they're no longer alive?

Obviously I don't mean 'is it ethical for a doctor to tell all about a patient once they've died' but more is it considered OK to do in situations considered of merit, that may not have been if the patient was still alive?

Chunky Monkey

I've asked this question before and I was told patient confidentiality still applies after the patient has died.

I've also been told the Hippocratic Oath is out of date and isn't referred to any more.

tallaght01

The hippocratic oath is something we al take at medical school graduation (taking the oath was one of the proudest moments of my life) but it's just a pledge. It's not legally binding.

Doctors are legally bound (well at leats bound interms of their regilatory bodies) by a duty of patient confidentiality. That duty isn't absoloute, though. There are some cases where you can go against the patient's wishes, for the greater good, thopugh this is rare.

To my mind, when the patient dies, you still owe them that duty of confidentiality. However, their next of kin gets told pretty much anything they want to know, and what they do with that info is up to them.

However, there wold be rare cases where a patient explicitly asks a doc not to tell thei next of kin their diagnosis, either before or after death, and that should be respected.

I'm no expert in this field, though, as my patients are kiddies and, therefore, they don't have the same issues with confidentiality when it comes to their next of kin.