Confidentiality: Case 2

Confidentiality: 
Case 2

A 75-year-old woman shows signs of abuse that appears to be inflicted by her husband. As he is her primary caregiver, she feels dependent on him and pleads with you not to say anything to him about it.

How is this case different from Case 1? How would you handle this situation?

Confidentiality

NOTE: The UW Dept. of Bioethics & Humanities is in the process of updating all Ethics in Medicine articles for attentiveness to the issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.  Please check back soon for updates!

Breaking Bad News: Case 2

You are a 25-year-old female medical student doing a rotation in an HIV clinic. Sara is a 30-year-old woman with advanced HIV who dropped out of college after she found that she contracted HIV from her husband, who has hemophilia. In talking to Sara, it turns out you share a number of things--you are from the same part of Montana originally, also have young children, and like to cook. Later in the visit, when you suggest that she will need some blood tests, she gets very angry and says, "What would you know about this?"

What happened?