Question about NHS staff looking themselves up on medical system

[whatisdrowsybutawake]

Hi, my DH is a newly qualified mental health psychiatrist and has been employed by NHS (Scotland) for few months. I have name changed for this post.

He admitted yesterday that out of curiosity he looked himself up on the system, and was able to access records from when he received treatment for his own mental health. He quickly realised this was inappropriate and is now very worried that this will be picked up in an audit and he could face disciplinary.

Does anyone have experience of this, or know if he is likely to be caught? He is unsure whether to raise it with his manager or just keep quiet about it. Thanks

@Ridikulus I mean fair enough if it's different for you! I didn't want to come across as arguing, sorry.

He will have been told very clearly on induction that this must not be done, but also during formal training to gain his qualifications. He’s acted totally inappropriately and it will most definitely be picked up and he will face some firm of disciplinary, a formal warning at the least.

It will be picked up. We have health boards in Scotland, not Trusts. And they audit this stuff. If he's looked at his MH records he'll have been in EMIS, care partner or another system depending on the board. As far as I know all are audited.

As a consultant working in the NHS, by the time you're a "newly qualified" psychiatrist you have been working as a doctor for minimum 8 years. Training on this kind of thing is mandatory and annual. If I want to look at the records of someone who isn't logged as on my caseload, e.g. a new referral, it gets audited and I get the odd email from information governance asking what I was up to. Obviously I am always able to explain and I'm pleased it is so closely audited.

You can make a SAR to see your own notes (we don't have an app in Scotland, except for maternity records) and that's what he should have done

Thanks everyone for the replies. He has worked in NHS for years and never done anything like this before. I haven't had a chance to speak to him about it today but he was planning to speak to his manager at some point. I just wanted to understand what sort of action he might be facing.

It can, because often unredacted notes contain "third party information" about other parties, that the patient doesn't automatically have a right to know about. For example a patient's mum might phone up and share information, but not want the patient to know she did so. It still goes in the notes under "third party". When you make a formal access request this third party information is redacted.

yep!

A Client would also be entitled to third party notes about themselves, they would not be redacted. This is still data that is held by the organisation on the individual.

The arguments as to why this isn’t allowed are entirely irrelevant. The fact is, it isn’t allowed, and everyone who works for the NHS knows this.

Just because you work somewhere doesn’t give you that automatic privilege.

If people think that’s wrong then they challenge it officially, not be so arrogant as to think the rules shouldn’t apply to them.

I would wonder what else he’s broken the rules on. Confidentiality? Ethics? Clearly he has no integrity and I wouldn’t trust him if I were in a MH crisis.

I agree that rule-breaking on whatever level does compromise trust in a clinician’s integrity, ethics and reliability. These things are essential characteristics for someone in a position of power and who hold access to a large amount of sensitive data.
I would take a very dim view of this if I were his manager / Trust auditor.

A psychologist doesn’t understand they aren’t a psychiatrist? A psychologist is less well qualified and not as important as a psychiatrist? And seriously the amount of people who would lie to their WIFE about being a psychiatrist when they were actually a psychologist must be very very small indeed.

The sooner he speaks to his manager the better. He’ll probably be okay. It’s a serious error but if can explain and reflect it will most likely be fine. Also, ime psychiatrists get away with lots of stuff that the other professionals wouldn’t. Try not to worry too much about it.

As an uninitiated member of the public, I hope he would get a warning and nothing more serious. I can’t see how it would benefit patients to have one less psychiatrist. Whilst I realise the argument about data breaching etc, I think to most ”Joe Public” we would see it as a lot less of a problem than looking up anyone else. It’s a technical breach sure. But no one was really harmed. Losing a doctor would be hugely disproportionate. He just needs to know not to do it again.

Agree, that was an odd question to ask!

The policy on this must have been available to him before he did it! He acted recklessly.

my DH is a newly qualified mental health psychiatrist

So as a minimum he has completed a 5 year medical degree, a two year foundation programme and three years core training in Psychiatry?

And at no point in that has he understood from the mandatory annual training he has completed on information governance that he is not allowed to do that?

I'm sorry OP, I don't find that credible.

And as an aside, when people moan about too much mandatory training, muppets like this are the reason why.

But if you didn’t want to see your details you wouldn’t be logging into your records.

Thanks. He has had years of seeing patients throughout training etc, so would have had many opportunities to look before and hasn't. It was a moment of curiosity, I think he wanted to know the level of detail recorded when he had his own mental health issues around 10 years ago. He feels very silly for doing so

I asked that. I thought the DH might perhaps not be a psychiatrist or a psychologist but perhaps was a counsellor working for a Talking Therapies service, or that type of thing. Obviously, they shouldn’t be looking up their records, whatever the job role, but I was suspicious that the job wasn’t correct at all. Anyone misrepresenting or exaggerating their job would be a red flag, on top of anything else.

I doubt he'd get more than a ticking off even if he got caught.

Firstly, we are all entitled to have access to our medical records, although doctors can redact certain entries if they feel it is appropriate. But the days of medical records being massively secret are long gone.
Secondly, if they sack him who they hell will they replace him with? We are short of doctors in this country and especially short of psychiatrists I believe, so I doubt the trust would be stupid enough to sack him for this.

I wouldn’t suggest he talks to his manager. Mumsnet can have a very black and white view of how things work/should work. Those of us who work/have worked for the NHS know that IT is a complete shambles and the likelihood of anyone finding out or caring is pretty slim.

This

Oooft, if I look at a patients online records I also can see who else has looked at them.
There is a warning every time you log onto the system not to access stuff.

Here's the guidance.

hub.nes.digital/media/1481/nes-fairwarning-guidance-for-users-of-health-boards-clinical-and-patient-management-systems.pdf

Did he miss the lectures on self sabotage?

I will add I know a few folk who have accessed their own records, they genuinely didn't realise & were never contacted about it.

A colleague of mine was sacked for looking up her Aunts medical file. Our trust runs audits once a month looking for users that have accessed patients with same names. So it's likely he will be caught at some point.