The General Medical Council (GMC) has published revised, expanded and reorganised guidance on confidentiality for all doctors practising in the UK.
The guidance – Confidentiality: Good practice in handling patient information– comes into effect from 25 April 2017. Revisions have been made to the guidance, last published in 2009, following an extensive consultation exercise. While the principles of the current GMC guidance remain unchanged, it now clarifies:
- The public protection responsibilities of doctors, including when to make disclosures in the public interest.
- The importance of sharing information for direct care, recognising the multi-disciplinary and multi-agency context doctors work in.
- The circumstances in which doctors can rely on implied consent to share patient information for direct care.
- The significant role that those close to a patient can have in providing support and care, and the importance of acknowledging that role.
The GMC has also published a decisionmaking flowchart and explanatory notes to show how the new guidance applies to situations doctors may encounter and find hard to deal with, such as reporting gunshot and knife wounds or disclosing information about serious communicable diseases.
The GMC’s new app – My GMP – signposts to the revised guidance. When the guidance comes into effect in April, additional resources and case studies will be published for doctors and patients.
