To ask a question to all NHS/police/frontline workers…

[thiu]

Trying to understand some more about this and whether it’s acceptable or not, having heard along the grapevine some info that might be about me.

Do you share what you like with your family and friends? Do you have to privatise certain details?

The two scenarios and professions below are totally made up as not to give any identifying info. The profession is neither of those but similar. The level of detail shared is along the same lines (location and what happened, to a close connection of mine).

e.g

If you are police and you responded to a fight, could you tell your family and friends which pub and that a man was hurt?

If you are a paramedic, could you tell your friend who worked in a supermarket that you were at their work at the weekend treating a colleague who’d had a stroke?

I’m just trying to ascertain how much detail is acceptable for these professionals to share. I appreciate they must all be difficult jobs where it is valuable to offload to family and friends.

Is it generally fine for people in these organisations to share what they want so long as they don’t say your name or date of birth?

Thank you.

Bump

I’m a police officer, the example you gave there is fine to share. We put this kind of information out on social media channels everyday.

I'm in frontline services and would share basic info about a situation without specific identifying details with family and friends.

If you are a paramedic, could you tell your friend who worked in a supermarket that you were at their work at the weekend treating a colleague who’d had a stroke?

Depends on context . If my friend who worked in a supermarket told me that their colleague had a stroke and the paramedics were called out, it would probably be acceptable to say yes I was working that day, without disclosing any further information (although to be honest I wouldn’t even say I had been there) .

Me saying to a friend I was at your work over the weekend treating a colleague who had a stroke -no! Easy for friend to identify which staff member did not complete their shift at the weekend or who is off sick now. So as a health care professional, I would have breached confidentiality because I’ve pretty much given my friend their colleagues diagnosis.

Basically in NHS the line is could someone identify the person you are talking about from the information you give.

I talk about my day in detail with my husband, I would never mention names as it doesn't add anything, but I might give age, condition etc to give context.
But I don't share very much at all with friends or wider family.

So the paramedic example you gave wouldn't be ok. You could easily identify the person through colleagues saying who paramedics came out for, and then the paramedic has given you their diagnosis.

A colleague might’ve been a bad example. Probably a less close connection than that, like if I were a customer in the store that a person works in, for example. Would that then be ok?

I’m an emergency service worker and share general info with friends and family eg there was a cycling accident on x road. But I wouldn’t share names, or any personal details.

I don’t think it’s okay to share details about a friend’s colleague with that friend.

Any info that is considered as having potential to identify a specific person is generally not acceptable.

To be fair I do see things like this from the local police force but would naming the pub and everything be fine? You could narrow down from that who frequents the pub and who might be hurt.

Could you still say, a university student was having a mental health crisis at X university? As there are hundreds of students, it’s not overly identifying but rumours could start?

I can’t comment on the police question but as a nurse I would definitely not tell the supermarket friend that I had treated one of their colleagues. Even if it was a massive supermarket there is still a risk that confidentiality could be breached. I err on the side of caution at all times.

I rarely talk about work to non work colleagues. Partly to keep work and real life separate.
I also from a moral viewpoint believe it is a privilege to work with the people I do and to be entrusted with sensitive information so to use it as an amusing story (for example) doesn’t seem right. If I do talk about situations they wouldn’t be recent and they would be very anonymised.

You know all the regulars at your local pub? Person hurt might not be a regular. If they are a regular chances are the local fb will know who's been hurt.

Our force regularly post about incidents that have happened in pubs etc. I've never known anyone contact us to complain that their privacy was invaded by an account of an incident.

I’m a midwife. You can’t share any information that could identify the patient.

So I could say I had a busy day looking after a woman in labour. I couldn’t say I was looking after a neighbour for example even if I don’t name them as many people would be able to identify who that is as there likely isn’t many neighbours about to give birth.

@thiu it would much more helpful to those of us who may comment if you gave as close of a description of what happened as you are comfortable with. I feel like you’re not going to get the answer you’re looking for with all 0f the hypotheticals

I could say to friends/family (who don’t work in my hospital) that the ward was busy, or we have a lot of very sick patients. I could say that we had an arrest on the ward. I could say that a confused patient threw poo at me or peed on my shoes.

I can’t say anything that might mean that a patient can be identified and I make it very clear to people (friends/family and patients etc) that I will not disclose anything to anyone but the patient, their NOK and the team treating them. People out of work often ask me to access their results. I won’t as that is not allowed.

@thiu Hey, I work in the NHS/police but deal with Uni students and this particular example would be fine to share with people as not only is it not giving personal details away but this is incredibly common so further negates the risk of them being found out. It’s difficult to advise you re your original post because you keep adding further hypothetical questions - not trying to sound rude, sorry! just saying it’s difficult to gauge if what you’re asking about is acceptable or not :)

No, why would I be telling a customer in the store the private details of a person who I had treated?

University student one is the most accurate, I should have gone with that initially. Wasn’t emergency services but was other NHS services.

Thank you this is really helpful.

Thanks. This is the closest analogy tbh and I can’t give any more details as is incredibly identifying, but I really appreciate this.

Yes it’s fine. You have to remember that we often appeal for witnesses as well, so need to give some information out to make sure it reaches the right people, I.e those at that specific pub that night for example.

Sorry @thiu I meant to say I don’t work in the NHS/police! But I work in a Uni in student services and have to abide by strict GDPR - my advice about telling people we had a ‘student’ (not naming them) who had a MH crisis still stands, that would be okay

I know you didn't ask this specifically but I'm a therapist and won't even acknowledge someone I know if you bring them up in session. Even if you ask (and I have been asked, do you know X, Y, Z). No, No disclosure whatsoever.

My DM works at our local hospital and she's told me about cases they've had but more generally like 'oh we had to do a ** operation' or whatever today, she'd never disclose anything that would make a person identifiable. She's had a few people in that I am friends with for Csections and only when the person has said 'oh your mum was in theatre' that I've known

It shouldn't be patient identifiable, the supermarket colleague stroke example would definitely fall foul of privacy expectations and if a compliant were made it'd be taken seriously.

But sometimes incidents can happen, it's not always black and white i.e. I think most would agree it was reasonable if I said to my wife something like "I went to a really awful job today, a 6yr old having an asthma attack, I wasn't sure she was going to survive trip to hospital, she's on ITU now..." however if my wife then says "oh my goodness that must be sally from work's daughter, she ran out to the hospital because her daughter was having an asthma attack"... That's really not ideal but could happen.

Also a lot of information is publicly available, for instance this page where photos and incident details are published of emergencies attended: https://woodheadmrt.org/a-busy-sunday-for-woodhead/ for most that's not patient identifiable, but if you happened to share a stable with the 30yr old horse rider you probably now know the details of the injuries she sustained.

I would not disclose any details that could identify someone - discuss circumstances or give examples yes
If it could lead to a breach of confidentiality then I would even change details especially geographically - our service covers an entire region so that’s not too difficult