Introduction
The position of doctors comes with many responsibilities, and one of them is to provide the patient with the whole truth about their condition, treatment, and prognosis. From this perspective, the doctor is ethically required to never withhold the relevant information from the patient and relay to them everything they need to know about their illness.
Discussion
However, there is another point to this issue: what should doctors do if they know that the truth about a patient’s condition, or prognosis, would bring the patient pain or harm? People who are ill are especially vulnerable, both physically and emotionally. There are times when knowing that they have little to no time left to live or that there is immense suffering from pain or paralysis in the future might actually be dangerous for the patient.
The stress from realizing their fate might add to the already existing trauma of the illness, and people might break down from its weight, both figuratively and mentally. Now, the imperative of Hippocrates’s Oath, “primum non nocere” or “do no harm,” states that a doctor’s actions must never bring any more suffering to the patient. If the doctor, after assessing the patient’s overall state, deems them too unstable to be given any bad news, then, perhaps, withholding information is justified, from the ethical and medicinal perspective of the matter.
Conclusion
Different cultures have varied opinions on the job of the doctor and how they should perform their duties during the practice. For example, some sources claim that the concept of medical secrecy originated in Ancient India, where the relationship between a doctor and a patient was deemed the most deserving of absolute trust from the latter. However, if the doctor has the patient’s unbridled faith, then should it go the other way around, too? In certain countries, especially those of the post-Soviet space, such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others, doctors often tend to hide important information regarding prognosis from patients. Instead, they relay it to their relatives, shifting the burden of telling the patient the grave news to them. This specifically often happens with female patients, as the patriarchal culture of these countries places them in a dependable position towards their families and husbands. This is, indeed, a violation of a doctor’s duty and ethics of the medical profession – the information should never be withheld from the patient, as they are concerned by it the most.