Confidentiality as a barrier to support seeking among physicians: the influence of psychosocial work factors in four European hospitals (the HOUPE study).

Background: Concerns about protecting patient's privacy can interfere with proper stress adaptation which is associated with physician's health. It is important to investigate relevant organizational confounders to this phenomenon to enable interventions that can ameliorate the subjective burden of patient confidentiality.

Objectives: This study investigates factors in the psychosocial work environment that can explain patient confidentiality's prominence in social support seeking among physicians, and if these factors covary differently with support seeking according to country.