Consent to the publication of patient information: More on confidentiality and case material

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7471.916-a

BMJ 2004;329:916 (16 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7471.916-a

Letter

Consent to the publication of patient information

More on confidentiality and case material

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

EDITOR—We welcome the views of the BMJ ethics committee.¹In an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics we drew attentionto some of the obstacles to gaining consent for publicationof case material in ethics.² We also reviewed the policy ofseveral general medical and specialist ethics journals and foundthat many, including the Journal of Medical Ethics, gave noinstructions on confidentiality.

Given the amount of case material that is used in medical ethics,this is a serious problem that editors may be addressing inany one of several ways: editors recognise the problems highlightedboth in our article and in this one and exercise discretionon what to publish; editors do not think that issues of confidentialityare raised when (apparently) anonymised case studies are used;editors have not given sufficient thought to the matter andhave no policy; or, editors did not recognise . . . [Full text of this article]

Heather Draper, senior lecturer biomedical ethics

University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT h.draper@bham.ac.uk

Wendy Rogers, associate professor medical ethics and health law

Department of Medical Education, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia