title: Confidentiality in Sports Medicine.
abstract: This article synthesizes existing literature to provide a summary of the ethical issues concerning patient confidentiality in sport. It outlines the medical principle of confidentiality and identifies cross-cultural ethicolegal variations that shape its implementation. Clinicians' multiple obligations, physical environments, and practice and policy contexts are discussed, and research detailing experiences of maintaining patient confidentiality in sport is reviewed. Policy recommendations for enhancing compliance with this ethical principle are summarized. It is argued that the context of sport exacerbates pressures on clinicians to break patient confidentiality, breaches occur regularly, and interventions are required to enhance ethical compliance in sports medicine.
authors.affiliation: School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK. Electronic address: d.e.malcolm@lboro.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Malcolm
mesh_terms: D003219:Confidentiality / Q000941:ethics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D016265:Conflict of Interest; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004300:Doping in Sports / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D010819:Physician's Role; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations / Q000941:ethics; D013178:Sports Medicine / Q000941:ethics*; D014481:United States
keywords: Confidentiality; Ethics; Policy recommendations; Practice; Sports medicine