Disclosure Catalysts in Student Disclosures of Personal Health Information to College Instructors

Contradictions and Predicaments in Instructors' Boundary Negotiations of Students' Health Disclosures

Students often disclose personal health information to their instructors for a variety of reasons. This puts instructors in an awkward position where they must negotiate the students' disclosure and what to do with the information. The authors conducted in-depth individual interviews with 23 university professors and identified three recurring tensions in the ways in which participants discussed their responses and actions based on student health disclosures: (1) encouraging and discouraging student disclosure, (2) changing and maintaining the instructor-student interactions based on the disclosure, and (3) personal involvement and professional detachment in responding to students' disclosures. For instructors, communication privacy negotiation is more than a negotiation of privacy boundaries and co-ownership of information on the part of the instructor; it becomes a form of self-preservation and personal health navigation, which then dictates future interactions of instructors when students disclose personal health information.