Thursday, September 19, 2013

What is Confidentiality?



This blog was created as an introduction to confidentiality. It is designed to ensure people in various fields know what confidentiality means, understand the importance of maintaining it and learn how it pertains to their job. As this blog evolves it will have various topics to include confidentiality in the workplace, HIPAA rules and regulations and more.  I will begin with a Q&A structure to get everyone familiar with confidentiality at its core before we get into more detailed information.

 Q: What does confidentiality mean?
 A: Confidentiality is the discretion of keeping secret information

Q: Why is confidentiality important?
A: Confidentiality is important because it protects the secrets of individuals’ and acts as a barrier to information and detail not supposed to be accessed. Confidentiality ensures that information is not disclosed to unauthorized people and is managed by way of data protection.

Q: how do you maintain confidentiality?
A: Confidentiality can be maintained by keeping the clients records safe and appropriately secured such as being locked and/or password-protected. Also, in most cases a client’s records can only be released to a third party only after the client provides written consent.



I think this is a good starting point for this blog and a new post will be up soon!

4 comments:

  1. Confidentiality is probably one of the most important guidelines and ethics code. Your client will be sharing very personal information with you, and it is important to know what you can and cannot say when it comes to dicussing with other colleages, or their family for example.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in confidentiality. I just had someone who works for an insurance agency tell me about a claim that my ex's parents had. Someone could very easily do the same to me and Id never know...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nothing its confidential anymore...yet it is important for mental health professionals to respect client's information.

    ReplyDelete
  4. All we can do is hope that people we work with are professional and follow the rules, but sadly, they often do not...

    ReplyDelete