What is Meant by Telling the Truth: Bonhoeffer on the Ethics of Disclosure

This article explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings on truth telling with reference to the problem of medical error in the US, the UK, and other developed nations, with particular attention to physicians’ resistance to disclosing their own mistakes to injured patients and their families. The brief essay ‘What Is Meant by “Telling the Truth”?’ and its historical context — Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment and interrogation in 1943 — is proposed as a text for medical ethicists and others seeking to overcome the barrier of the ‘hidden curriculum’ within the culture of medicine, which encourages medical students and physicians to conceal their errors and to fear disclosure.