MCI Regulation 7.14
Definition
The provision of the Medical Council of India's Professional Conduct Regulations (now carried forward in NMC regulations) requiring that a doctor maintain patient confidentiality except where disclosure is required by law or in the public interest to prevent serious harm.
- Origin
- Medical Council of India, Professional Conduct Regulations
- Current status
- Carried forward in NMC regulations
- Subject
- Patient confidentiality duty
- Exceptions
- Legal requirement or public interest to prevent serious harm
Common questions
How does this regulation affect a doctor issuing a medico-legal certificate?+
It requires the doctor to balance confidentiality against disclosure obligations, releasing information in a medico-legal certificate only to the extent legally required or justified by public interest, rather than sharing broader clinical detail unnecessarily.
What counts as a public-interest exception under this rule?+
Situations such as preventing serious harm to the patient or others, for example reporting evidence of a crime like assault or poisoning encountered during treatment, are treated as justified departures from strict confidentiality.
Related terms
- AMA Code of Medical Ethics
- The American Medical Association's voluntary professional standards document, first adopted 1847 and updated continuously. Opinion 9.7 addresses expert testimony; Opinion 3.2 addresses...
- GMC Good Medical Practice
- The UK General Medical Council's core professional standards document (most recent edition 2024). Binding on all registered medical practitioners in the UK;...
- Helsinki Declaration
- The World Medical Association's statement on the ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects, first adopted 1964, last revised 2024. Requires...
- Medico-Legal Certificate (MLC)
- The formal document through which a physician's examination findings enter the criminal-justice system in India. Required to record the date and time...
- NMC Code of Ethics
- India's binding professional-conduct standard for registered medical practitioners, originally the MCI Professional Conduct Regulations 2002 and maintained under the NMC Act 2019....
- Tarasoff Duty
- The obligation, established in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1976), on a therapist or treating physician to take reasonable...