Confidentiality and Info governance

Question 1

What is confidentiality

Answer 1

Having another’s trust or confidence;
entrusted with secrets or private affairs

Question 2

What is confidential information

Answer 2

That someone is a patient. eg: is Mr S a patient here?
- Patient data eg name, address, age, marital status,
sexuality etc.
- Their illness or condition,
- A patient’s records
- Their treatment
- Appointments or attendance
- Images or recordings
- Patient’s results

Question 3

When can confidentiality be broken?

Answer 3

• With the individuals consent
• If in the patient’s interest but consent cannot be gained
• If required by law
• When there’s a statutory duty, eg; births, deaths, communicable diseases *
• If overwhelmingly in the public interest
• If necessary for national security or
  prevention/detection of crime would be
  delayed
• Certain situations related to medical research

Question 4

What laws govern confidentiality?

Answer 4

Data Protection Act 1998
Human rights act 1998
National health service act 2006
GDPR 2018

Question 5

What are the 7 principles of GDPR

Answer 5

• Lawfulness, fairness and transparency in relation to individuals
• Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
• Data minimisation
• Accurate & kept up to date
• Storage limitation - for no longer than is necessary
• Integrity and confidentiality (security of personal data)
• Accountability - of the data’s controller

Question 6

What is a caldicott guardian?

Answer 6

Senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of patient and service user information and enabling appropriate information sharing.

Question 7

What are risk management techniques?

Answer 7

• Complaint handling
• Risk assessment
• Staff awareness/training
• Protocol and guidelines monitoring
• Good medical records
• Adverse incident reporting

Question 8

4 principles of risk management

Answer 8

• Identify risks
• Assess the risk
• Reduce/ eliminate risk
• Cost the risk

Question 9

What are the 6 Caldicott principles?

Answer 9

• Justify purpose of use of info
• Only use info when necessary
• Use minimum necessary info
• Access should only be need-to-know basis
• Responsibilities of people accessing should be known
• Comply with the law