I mean I can tell my lawyer if I committed a crime and it’s attorney client privilege. I can tell my wife or husband and we are protected not to squeal on each other. Same thing about telling a priest it is privileged information. How come a nurse or doctor is required to report it. I mean non of the above are life and death but a confession from a patient should be privileged in my opinion why is it not? Like if a person says they use meth or whatever, we really don’t report it. But if he get’s in a wreck and only causes himself or herself injury why are we to report it to the police does not HIPPA cover this?
There is a conflict between confidentiality and mandatory reporting. The ideal of confidentiality is that anything you say in private that you don’t want recorded or repeated should be kept private. The ideal of mandatory reporting is that if anyone finds out about a crime a person has committed, it should be reported for the sake of justice.
The solution is that we limit both of them in different situations. Confidentiality is generally limited to those who have a crucial and necessary role in keeping information confidential. In other words, those positions or professions that are deemed essential by society and which require confidentiality to function properly. That’s lawyers, medical professionals, and in some cases, religious professionals.
Mandatory reporting is generally limited to those who are in a position that allows access to vulnerable individuals. That’s teachers, social workers, police officers, and sometimes also medical professionals or religious professionals.
Because those include some of the same categories, the law gets very specific and sometimes even contradictory in different jurisdictions.