Reinterpreting the Ethics of Patient Consent and Disclosure of Information by the Clinician - Research Paper Example

Of paramount importance is the creation of either a partnership or paternalism paradigm whereby the needs of the patient are balanced with the clinician's obligation to provide treatment and life-saving medical procedures to the patient in some circumstances. In addition, psychiatric professionals have the duty to gain the informed consent of their clients before any type of therapy is entered into, even to the point of guaranteeing confidentiality, yet even this has ethical limitations that must be discussed with the patient ahead of time.

 Psychiatrists, psychologists, and medical staff all have similar guidelines to follow in gaining informed consent from their clients or patients. In most cases, the confidentiality of the patient is guaranteed, unless the client has expressly granted permission to the clinician to disclose certain information to others. There are numerous exceptions to this, however, and then there are also ethical considerations to take into account. Consider the duty to warn that governs any information given to a practicing clinician where a client threatens another person or a doctor has determined that their behavior is threatening to their own life6.

In such cases, the duty to warn supersedes any obligation to gain informed consent ahead of time. To govern this, numerous court cases have been argued through the years that ultimately provide a template moving forward to stipulate what exactly patient consent and the duty to warn entails.Historically, the duty to warn has been resolved in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. In this case, the parents of a girl named Tatiana Tarasoff made the claim that the psychiatrists failed to warn them of the threats made against the Tarasoff family.