Which statement correctly differentiates privacy and confidentiality in clinical practice?

• A. Privacy refers to a patient’s rights to control information; confidentiality is the obligation to protect information shared within the care team.
• B. Privacy refers to the patient's rights to control information; confidentiality is about sharing information with the public.
• C. Privacy and confidentiality are the same concept.
• D. Confidentiality refers to public access to medical records.

Answer: (A)

In clinical practice, privacy is about a patient’s right to control who can access their personal health information and under what circumstances. Confidentiality is the obligation of the health care team to protect that information and to share it only with authorized people involved in the patient’s care, or as permitted by consent or law. So the best statement captures privacy as the patient’s control of information and confidentiality as the duty to safeguard information shared within the care team.

Disclosing information to the public would violate confidentiality, and treating privacy and confidentiality as the same concept ignores the distinction between a patient’s control over their information and the health team’s duty to protect and limit disclosures.