Medical confidentiality Flashcards
What are the 4 domains of the GMC which describe the professional values and behaviours they expect from any doctor registered with them?
Knowledge, skills and performance
Safety and quality
Communication, partnership and teamwork
Maintaining trust - patient confidentiality is key here
Are death certificates covered by patient-doctor confidentiality?
No, they are publicly registered
If there is a suspicious death in hospital you have to report it to the fiscal. It may lead to an FAI where they look into the cause of death.
Medical confidentiality is based on which law?
The law of contract and equity.
As a doctor you will sign a contract with your employer and this will include medical confidentiality.
The Common Law
Information acquired by doctors in their professional capacity will generally be confidential under the common law.
Information given or obtained in confidence should not be used or disclosed further except in certain circumstances (unless there is a legal basis to break confidentiality e.g child protection)
As a doctor, this comes out of our duty of care that our professional body regulates
The GDPR is the law to do with what?
How does GDPR define personal data?
Data protection
It protects all personal data (medical, banking, social media, business data etc)
‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’
It ensures data is secure, processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner etc
General Data Protection Regulation for doctors
Information on a patient’s health record is likely to be special category data for the purposes of the GDPR.
In which situations can confidentiality be breached? (8)
With the patient’s consent
With other medical practitioners in the patient’s interest
In the doctors own defence
Statutory requirements (by law)– prevention, detection and prosecution of serious crime
When directed to by a court of law
Protection of other persons
In the public interest (terrorism, murder, culpable homicide, rape)
Child abuse
What is a Caldicott or data guardian?
A senior person within the NHS or local authority social care services who is responsible for protecting the confidentiality of patient information and enabling appropriate information sharing
Every health board has one.
Any decision to do with medical records has to be run past them
