Client Privilege: Should Saving Lives Comes First?

Let's imagine you visited a doctor because you have a serious illness. You walked into his office and started speaking freely because you trusted the doctor to keep your information confidential. Of course, that's what every client wants, and it's also one of the ethics of the profession - to keep client information confidential, except on occasion when one does not have a choice but still must seek the client's permission.

When discussing client privilege, trust is the number one priority to maintain. Whether a client is at the doctor's office or with a lawyer, even when with a priest, their information needs not to be disclosed. But shouldn't there be an exception when confessing some information that could save a life? Shouldn't steps be taken to protect lives?

Of course, I concur with that. Since a client's information must be held confidentially, I am of the strong belief that preservation of human life should also be prioritised. Confidentiality is important, but that shouldn't be a cover-up to make innocent people suffer or die.

If a doctor, lawyer or a priest learns of an endangering threat that can be prevented, it is morally justifiable to reveal necessary information and not spill everything for the purpose of saving lives. After all, what is the value of keeping something secret if it results in tragedy that could have been avoided?

Talking about a country like Nigeria where many situations like insecurity, kidnapping, domestic violence and other crimes are frequently everywhere, imagine a person confessing plans to carry out a deadly attack that would claim lives or even revealing the locations of kidnapped victims. I bet you, if such information could save lives, many Nigerians would not hesitate to act rather than keep silent. In such a case, protecting lives outweighs keeping confidential information secret.

At the same time, when we opine that client privilege should be removed, don't we think it will cause problems? Of course, it would. What this means is that people won't feel comfortable speaking out to doctors, lawyers or priests. They'd rather die in silence than open up to any of them because of their trust being broken.

A patient might hide important symptoms for fear of being exposed. Even an individual battling addictions, depression, etc would find it difficult to open up to a priest because they no longer trust that their conversations will remain private. This will make professionals find it difficult to do their jobs effectively because the information they might need to solve the problems might be withheld by the patient or client.

In the end, the result this will bring to society would be fear and suspicion among people. And we know that once trust is broken, it would be hard to rebuild. For me, it would be better to retain client privilege, making it a general rule and being careful with defining the exceptions in the best and clearest way. Such exceptions should not be handled with a light hand and not for personal gains, too, but to seriously prevent harm that could happen.