Patient Privacy and Exploitation

As discussed in Chapter 1, healthcare has some of the most trusted practitioners of any industry. Perhaps that is why it is so disheartening to hear about breaches of that trust in ways that make a mockery of healthcare practitioners’ codes of ethics. In an age of technological advances, the Internet, cell phones, and other portable electronic devices, there are numerous new ways to invade patients’ privacy, endanger their personal health information, and exploit them when they are most vulnerable.