New guidance - Confidentiality
12 October 2009
New guidance on doctors’ obligations to maintain patient confidentiality comes into effect today. Confidentiality (2009) sets out the principles of confidentiality and respect for patients’ privacy that doctors are expected to understand and follow.
Download the new guidance
Core guidance
Download the core Confidentiality guidance (284kb, pdf) together with the supplementary guidance below which explains how these principles apply in situations doctors encounter or find hard to deal with. You can also view an online version of the guidance.
Supplementary guidance
We propose to review the supplementary guidance regularly to keep it up to date and relevant to the problems doctors face. At the time of publishing this core guidance, we are also publishing supplementary guidance on:
Welsh versions of the guidance
Download the core Welsh Confidentiality guidance (1.4mb, pdf) and supplementary Welsh guidance (615kb, pdf).
Development of the guidance
You can read about the development of Confidentiality (165kb, pdf) which explains the process we undertook during the review including:
- scoping work involving the commission of a literature review on Public and Professional Attitudes to Privacy of Healthcare Data (316kb, pdf).
- initial consultation on issues for the review to consider
- formal consultation to test the draft guidance and a summary of responses received
- results of an audit (119kb, pdf) undertaken of the process for analysing the responses
Download our confidentiality wallpaper
Finally, why not download confidentiality wallpaper to show your commitment to maintaining confidentiality?
Podcast
We have produced a podcast to explain and contextualise the guidance which focuses on reporting gunshot and knife wounds.
Listen to the podcast online - click twice on the play button >> to start