Confidentially and the family physician

The principle of confidentiality is one of the clearest and firmest rules of professional ethics. However, situations can arise in which confidentiality ought to be abridged in favor of other, weightier values. In the case of a teenager who asks a family physician to prescribe birth control pills for her without informing her parents, the best interests of the family as a unit may justify a certain aggressive but oblique strategy abridging confidentiality.