DOCTORS MUST TELL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5143, 24 June 1927, Page 1

DOCTORS MUST TELL.

STATEMENTS BY PATIENTS. NO PRIVILEGE IN LAW. The question whether a conversation between a patient and a doctor is privileged in a court of law arose at the hearing o.f a case at the Sydney Court recently. A woman was charged with a serious offence, and a well-known member of the medical profession, who had subsequently attended her, was called as a witness for the prosecution.

Constable Stinson, police prosecutor asked the witness to state the result of his examination, and as to what defendant told him had happened to her, but the witness pleaded privilege, fmd pointed out that frequently doctors were only able to save the lives of patients when told the absolute tr.uth. Such conversations. he said, were always regarded by the medical profession as strictly confidential, and not to be divulged even in a court of law. The attitude he took up w.as that it was not desirable in the interests of the profession that such statements should be disclosed, otherwise patients would lose confidence in the doctors and wpuld be disinclined to help them in their diagnosis by telling them the truth,

The Magistrate Mr A. R. Perry, S.M. : I am afraid, doctor, if the police prosecutor presses the question I will have to allow it, and if you don’t tell the Luth I will have to send you to Long Bay.

At the request of the police prosecutor other witnesses were allowed to be interposed while the matter was being considered. Subsequently the doctor was recalled and the question again put to him. Mr C. R. Penny, who -appeared for the defendant, objected to the doctor being forced to answer the question. A conversation between a patient and a doctor, he said, was considered as saered, and as secret as that between a penitent and a confessor, and should be treated as such. He would ask the doctor to adhere to his original resolution.

The magistrate said that while no one forced a clergyman to disclose a confidence, that did not preclude a doctor from giving evidence in a court of law. If the doctor did not answer the question he must take the consequences. The doctor had his sympathy, but he could not allow that sympathy to over-ride his interpl station of the law.

The witness, after remarking that he was very sorry to have to do it, then answered the questions as put by the police prosecutor, whereupon defendant was committed .for trial.

Dr. R. H. Todd, secretary of the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association, when questioned on the subject stated that he was familiar with the principle of law involved —that privilege in Court could not be claimed for a conversation between a doctor and patient. The B.M.A. was not concerned, he added. The matter was solely one of law.