Editorials

Publishing information about patients

Last week three doctors appeared before the General Medical Council, the body that regulates British doctors, charged with serious professional misconduct because they had published a report on a patient without, it was claimed, gaining adequate consent from the patient (p 1245).¹ The report, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1993,² concerned three patients with bulimia nervosa who had bled themselves. The paper came from Aberdeen, and the local newspaper picked up the story. It published only details that were in the case report (which included, for instance, "Ms C is a 26 year old preregistration doctor"), but a friend of one of the patients was able to identify her from the newspaper report. The patient made a complaint to the General Medical Council, saying that, although she had consented to the use of her case for teaching and . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Using pictures in the BMJ

Trish Groves and Jan Croot
BMJ 2005 330: 916. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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• Hood, C. A, Hope, T., Dove, P. (1998). Videos, photographs, and patient consent. BMJ 316: 1009-1011 [Full text]  
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