Dear Colleagues:Our offices receive correspondence each year most often expressing overwhelming gratitude for the outstanding care rendered to our patients by our dedicated professional staff.

There are, however, occasional letters that bring to our attention those proverbial “opportunities for improvement,” and every so often common threads emerge that warrant particular emphasis. One such thread concerns the very private nature of the care we deliver to people who come through our doors at a particularly vulnerable moment in their lives. They place in us their trust that we will respect their privacy at a time when feelings of anxiety, anger, disbelief, pain, fear and anguish all preclude their normal demeanor. They trust that the details of their affliction will be limited to those who need to know. Yet that trust has been breached, not often, but nonetheless breached. This is a trust earned with years of diligent attention by hundreds of individuals, but a trust so easily displaced by a single individual’s indiscretion.

During the past year, a patient’s family overheard a particularly disturbing conversation among caregivers in one of our elevators. In the cafeteria, a spouse inadvertently learned of her husband’s grim prognosis from a casual conversation between members of our staff. Yet another was subjected to public disclosure of detailed medical and social information at a neighborhood barbecue by a physician who was unaware of the close relationship of one of the guests to the patient.

We as caregivers must have access to the most private aspects of our patients’ lives in order to deliver appropriate care. Such access requires great trust, and that trust must be continually earned and guarded with constant vigilance.

Sincerely,

Andy Whittemore, MD
Chief Medical Officer