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Disclosure of confidential information by mental health nurses, of patients they assess to be a risk of harm to self or others: An integrative review
Author(s) -
Conlon Darren,
Raeburn Toby,
Wand Timothy
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.911
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1447-0349
pISSN - 1445-8330
DOI - 10.1111/inm.12642
Subject(s) - confidentiality , harm , judgement , mental health , psychology , clinical judgement , risk assessment , medicine , nursing , psychiatry , social psychology , computer security , family medicine , computer science , political science , law
There is a duty of confidentiality on the part of mental health nurses when they handle confidential patient information. Nonetheless, it may be necessary to disclose confidential information of a patient if the patient is assessed as being a risk to self or others, to protect the patient or others from harm. However, disclosing information inappropriately may constitute a breach of confidentiality. There is a paucity of information on how mental health nurses understand the rules of confidentiality when deciding to withhold or disclose confidential information in these circumstances. An integrative review of the literature was undertaken to explore the disclosure of confidential information by mental health nurses when they assess a patient as being a risk of harm. The findings indicate the rules of confidentiality are not well understood, or are not adhered to by mental health nurses. Risk assessments were found to underpin deliberations to withhold or disclose confidential information of a patient, despite risk being difficult to predict with any certainty. For risk assessment, mental health nurses were noted to prefer their unstructured clinical judgement over actuarial methods; and defer to their clinical intuition over scores of a structured risk assessment instrument, when making structured clinical judgement‐backed decisions in this area of their practice. Gaps in the literature that may be addressed by future empirical research were revealed during this integrative review.

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