Originally Posted by
sometimes_miss
Patient privacy is a sorry joke. Physicians routinely discuss their patients private sexual matters in public, often by name, hospital and office staff read the charts and talk about the patients and laugh at their 'peculiarities' all the time. Don't for a minute think what you tell them is staying private. All you can hope for is that no one you know will ever come into contact with them. Sure, the law states it's a crime to make your private information known to anyone 'outside the office' or to anyone who isn't 'directly involved with your health care', but that only limits it, to, oh, every single doctor, nurse, nursing assistant, transporter, secretary, doctor who reads your xrays, ekg's, consulting physicians and all of their nursing, billing and secretarial staff, lab tests, the lab technicians, billing workers, computer workers, pretty much everyone in the whole building and every building that anyone works in that has any contact with your files. Sure, it's unethical. So is telling any person 'I'll call you' when you have no intention of doing so. The total number of persons that is able to keep a secret? One.
My only recommendation if you are going to have any procedure where you will have any kind of anesthetic would be to go to a hospital at least several counties away. And if you work in the health care industry, word will eventually spread anyway.