u/SD-97

Has anyone actually read the NHS England "Stopping unlawful access to records" guidance? It's started circulating on X with lots of just criticism.

Most of it is uncontroversial. Don't look up friends or family things, don't look at your own record, don't go morbidly looking at celebs/disasters. Fine, obviously.

The bit that's non-sensical is the "personal or professional curiosity". They list accessing the records of "patients or service users you have seen in the past, when you do not have a valid reason to do so"; and then say professional curiosity is never a legitimate excuse.

For example, I'm on the tail end of a run of nights, but I quickly see a child, with enough red flags that I'm worried about a SOL, admit them to the ward for the day team to sort imaging and next steps. I then don't set foot in the hospital for several days. The two realistic endings are: it was a false alarm and they went home, or they got shifted out to tertiary unit. I want to know which. Not out of nosiness but because I want to learn/reflect on whether my threshold for worrying was right or wrong. That's surely what we should be encouraging, treating professionals as professionals over their own practice and learning. This is clearly yet another reflexive middle-management overreach from people haven't got the foggiest about what working in healthcare is like.

Surely the BMA / other professional bodies needs to step in and challenge this.

Where exactly is the line between "professional curiosity" (never legitimate, apparently) and professionally necessary review of outcomes? Every worked example they give is a friend, a family member or a public figure. None of them address this.
If it's not lawful, what's the approved route? Do I have to email a governance lead every time I want to know if my differential was right?
Who did they actually consult? Was the GMC in the room? The BMA? Any of the Colleges? Anyone who does clinical work?
Has the ICO signed off on the interpretation that a treating clinician reviewing their own patient's outcome falls outside "work purposes"?.

All just another nail in the coffin of what it means to practice medicine in the UK...Quite literally taking the fun out of learning.

‘Consultant clinician’ should no longer always mean doctor in today’s NHS...

New NHSE guidance on "unlawful access to records" - does anyone else think the "professional curiosity" bit is simply not workable with what medicine/learning should be?

We need a house selling revolution.