Ethical Issues In Confidentiality

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Obstacles in Protecting Confidentiality There are a number of problems that present in modern practice that can significantly affect or compromise confidential client information. Primarily, these types of problems are usually categorized as belonging into one of two areas of violation that provide unauthorized access to confidential information. The first area of disturbance of confidentiality occurs when the professional boundaries of the client-therapist relationship are breached, such as when practitioners partake in multiple relationships or decide to access public information about a patient online. Formulating boundaries, while not always easy to do, is often necessary in order to protect the practitioner from allegations of malpractice, negligence, or any other type of ethical violations for that matter, including breaches in confidentiality. Unfortunately, since ethics are not clearly defined in terms of simply black-or-white or right-or-wrong, it becomes that much more difficult to determine where one line of the professional boundaries starts and another begins. The result of these inconsistencies tends to be somewhat …show more content…

Security problems generally involve a leak of information because of the type of technology being used in clinical and online practice, such as computers, mobile devices (e.g., cell phones or tablets), email, voicemail, fax machines, electronic records on large servers, and the Internet when administering psychological services online. Regrettably, protection of confidentiality has yet to catch up with the majority of these technological advancements. Some of the primary threats to the security of confidentially information originates from things like web or email viruses, online hackers looking to access information, flaws in software or firewalls, damage or malfunction to the technology itself, and user error (Regueiro et al.,

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