Is it acceptable for a physician to break confidentiality in the case of sexually transmitted diseases? A mapping of young Kuwaiti's views

IntroductionConfidentiality is essential for the establishment of trust between physicians and their patients.ObjectivesThe circumstances under which it is acceptable to young Kuwaiti for a physician to break confidentiality to protect the spouse of a patient with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) were examined.MethodA sample of 263 young Kuwaiti indicated the acceptability of breaking confidentiality in 48 scenarios that were all possible combinations of five factors: disease severity, time taken by the physician to discuss with the patient, the patient's intent to inform the spouse about the disease, the patient's intent to adopt protective behaviors, and the decision to seek the advice of an expert in infectious diseases before breaking confidentiality.ResultsThrough cluster analysis, four qualitatively different positions were found: Quite never acceptable (6% of the sample, mostly males), Depends on husband's willingness to inform (3%), Depends on husband's protective behavior (29%, mostly females), and Quite always acceptable (32%). The remaining participants did not express any clear view.ConclusionIn Kuwait, students’ trust in the medical profession is, therefore, not likely to be seriously undermined if, from time to time, and in well-specified cases, individual physicians decide to break confidentiality when facing dilemmas of the kind examined in the current study.     

Organizational social context and psychopathology of youth in residential care: The intervening role of youth–caregiver relationship quality

Drawing on an ecological approach with multiple informants, this study investigated the mediating role of youth–caregiver relationship quality in associations between different features of residential care settings' organizational social context and youth's psychopathology. Participants were 378 youth aged between 12 and 25 years old, and 54 caregivers aged between 24 and 57 years old, from 29 generalist residential youth care settings in Portugal. Given the hierarchical structure of data, analyses were performed using multilevel modeling. Results revealed that organizational social contexts characterized by higher levels of engagement, stress, and centralization, as perceived by the caregivers, were associated with lower levels of youth's externalizing problems (e.g., aggressive behavior and delinquency), reported by the caregivers, via better youth–caregiver relationship quality, perceived by the youth in care. These findings highlight the relevance of creating an organizational social context in residential care settings that supports caregivers in establishing high-quality relationships with the youth in care, thereby promoting their mental health. This study contributes to the clarification of conflicting findings in previous studies of this field, by offering further empirical investigation of these issues.     

A critical review of relationship quality measures: Is a fresh start needed? An agenda to move forward

Social relationships in and around work are a fundamental building block of organizational life. According to a number of relationship theories, the quality of those relationships is a critical aspect of their influence on a variety of employee and organizational outcomes. Relationship quality is, therefore, one of the most commonly studied constructs in management research. Our paper critically reviews the landscape of relationship quality measures used in management studies, identifying critical issues with how the construct has been conceptualized and measured. To help advance research on the subject and improve measurement, we identify and evaluate 21 relationship quality measures that have been developed for, or used in, management research. Overall, we find that the instruments used to measure relationship quality in management research have significant limitations associated with their conceptualizations and operationalizations. Many of these limitations stem from the fact that most of the measures used to assess the construct were not originally designed to measure relationship quality, which impedes research clarity and implications. We offer a future research agenda and several recommendations for the advancement of management research on relationship quality.