Published 2 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4516
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4516

Letters

GMC’s guidance on confidentiality

Author’s reply

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

The point of my letter was not that patients’ confidentiality should be discarded, but that there should be an appropriate balance with the doctor’s right of public reply.

That is why my letter stated that the General Medical Council’s supplementary guideline would have been better off defining how best to protect both parties’ interests. For example, the guideline could protect a doctor’s right of reply by defining certain parameters, such as recommending that the reply contains the minimum factual information to correct grossly misleading medical misinformation that would otherwise damage a doctor’s reputation; that it casts no unwarranted personal aspersions or comments on the patient; that it is entertained only if the patient has been provided with absolute evidence for the correct details but still refuses to retract; and that it is confined as much as possible to those medical aspects already publicly divulged by the patient.

Rarely, patients can . . . [Full text of this article]

Jack Gilliat, consultant physician

1 London E15 3HQ

gilliatj@doctors.org.uk


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GMC’s guidance on confidentiality
Robert Lewis
bmj.com, 12 Nov 2009 [Full text]
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