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Postgraduate Medical Journal 2001;77:512-513; doi:10.1136/pmj.77.910.512
© 2001 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine.
Postgrad Med J 2001;77:512-513 ( August )

Review

Ethical, professional, and legal obligations in clinical practice: a series of discussion topics for postgraduate medical education
Topic 5: disclosing confidential information

D M Gore

Craigavon Area Hospital, Northern Ireland

Correspondence to: Mr D M Gore, Department of Surgery, University of Liverpool, 5th Floor UCD Building, Daulby Street, Liverpool L69 3GA, UK dmgore@liverpool.ac.uk

Submitted 24 May 2000; Accepted 2 August 2000

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

    Introduction

This is the last discussion topic in a series of five dealing with ethical, professional, and legal obligations of clinical practice. Junior doctors tend to lack confidence in these subjects, and thus I organised a series of informal discussions in our surgical unit on which these discussion articles are based. The sessions were prepared with reference to non-academic literature readily available from the General Medical Council and the medical defence organisations. While our unit dealt with these issues from a surgical perspective, the obligations of clinical practice apply to all practitioners and the series could be easily modified for other clinical specialties.

Sometimes the principle of confidentiality conflicts with ethical, professional, and legal obligations.


    Disclosure to the police

Policemen are often to be found around hospitals, particularly in accident and emergency departments. Normally the police have no special right to be told confidential information in the absence of a court order under the Police . . . [Full text of this article]


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