Doctors demand action to stop patients lusting after them online

British Medical Association calls for
sanctions against people who post footage of GP consultations

One-Minute Read Hinnah Mian

“These can range from terrible appointments to people posting to
share how hot their doc is. And for each of these, private
consultations are opened up to public comment and critique, and the
individual’s privacy is undermined. This is not an issue of
transparency or of accountability of practice but one of boundaries
and trust,” trainee GP Zoe Greaves told
the association’s annual representative meeting in
Brighton.

Research has shown that patients only remember about a third of
the content of their consultation, so they are allowed to use
recordings as a memory aide, says the Daily Mail.

But doctors say action is needed to ensure these recordings are
used appropriately.

A BMA spokesperson said: “Should a patient publish audio or
video recordings without consent, they may be at risk of unlawfully
misusing the doctor’s private information. Greater support and
legal protection should therefore be afforded to doctors, given the
significant difficulties they may face in trying to prevent
publication or remove published material.”

However, the chair of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee, John
Chisholm, said that giving  doctors more powers to force
patients to remove such posts “would be problematic”, because
“it really isn’t very patient-centred to have a motion that
talks of condemning patients and sanctions against
patients”.

Dr Cyrus Abbasian agreed, saying that “the consultation
ultimately belongs to the patient and they can do what they want
with it”. He told delegates: “We need proper guidelines
for patients, and we need to educate them that putting this
information online could ultimately damage them.”