Invasion of Privacy in the Hospital

Abstract

Hospitals are often busy places, and in the course of routine procedure many patients have their privacy violated. While patients have a right to privacy, sometimes called a “right to be let alone,” courts will not generally permit a patient to recover money damages unless it can be shown that the invasion was intentional and would be objectionable to a person of ordinary sensibilities. Two cases from the State of Maine illustrate the issues involved. The first is a 1976 case in which a physician, who had operated on a patient twice for cancer of the larynx, was taking a series of photographs of the patient's neck. On the day the patient died, the physician and a nurse came to the patient's room. The physician (or the nurse, at his direction) raised the dying patient's head and placed some blue operating room toweling under it for color contrast and proceeded to take photographs.