Sharing Patient Cases: Balancing Confidentiality and Educational Needs
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https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/sharing-patient-cases-balancing-confid...
Sharing Patient Cases: Balancing Con�dentiality and Educational Needs August 29, 2018 Theodore Fallon, Jr, MD, MPH, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Psychiatric Times, Psychiatric Times Vol 35, Issue 8, Volume 35, Issue 8
Providing detailed descriptions of interactions that occurred between patient and therapist moved our field forward by both honing our technique and considering more effective ways to help our patients. But is the sharing of cases ethical?
Prior to 1990, the psychiatric literature often contained detailed clinical case descriptions. These descriptions allowed us to communicate important and nuanced aspects of our psychotherapeutic work. Providing detailed descriptions of interactions that occurred between patient and therapist moved our �eld forward by both honing our technique and considering more effective ways to help our patients. Today, the vast majority of professional publications are available to anyone with access to the internet. Perhaps as a result, the number of detailed descriptions in journal articles have decreased, and some have even stopped publishing case reports. In turn, this deprives our �eld of the opportunities to provide optimal stewardship of our unique and valuable knowledge base. (Of course, presentations to exclusively professional audiences continue; these seminars and conferences remain viable options that can offer this same rich clinical material.) To maximize our continued progress, we need to retain our practice of presenting detailed clinical reports. Only detailed narratives provide the actual, in-the-moment, give and take of clinical work. Unfortunately, using composite or disguised cases, now a common practice, creates �ction that may fall short of guiding us to the answers, and even to the questions, about real psychotherapeutic process. For example, to achieve anonymity, we may This website stores data such as cookies to enable essential site functionality, as well as marketing, personalization, and analytics. consider changing a refugee from Sudanese to Armenian. That may seem a Cookie Policy small detail with no obvious impact until we consider the huge difference Accept between the trauma these two diverse cultures experienced. Deny There is an inherent dilemma when we publish detailed clinical material. On the x
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