BMJ  2004;329:566-568 (4 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7465.566

Education and debate

Consent to the publication of patient information

¹ University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, 88 College St, Toronto, Canada M5G 1L4 peter.singer@utoronto.ca

Sometimes valuable clinical information cannot be published because it is not possible to contact patients to obtain consent. The BMJ therefore asked its ethics committee to review the guidelines on consent

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

Introduction

Information about a patient that a doctor acquires during a professional relationship with the patient is confidential. It may not normally be revealed to others except with the consent of the patient concerned. But does this position admit of exceptions? We argue it does and describe those exceptions here.

Confidentiality

Although the publication of information that enables the patient to be identified is widely agreed to be a breach of confidentiality, the position of anonymised information is more contentious. In one view there is no breach of confidentiality if the patient cannot be identified. Another, stricter, view of confidentiality suggests that revealing anonymised information still amounts to a breach of confidentiality, as it is still revealing details of a private encounter.

Strong reasons exist for preferring the former view. It can be argued that the obligation of confidentiality is restricted to information that is capable of being connected to a particular . . . [Full text of this article]

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BMJ policy

Conclusions

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