Читать книгу Occupational Health Law - Diana Kloss - Страница 59

There is a general duty to preserve the confidentiality of medical information and records (Chapter 3). OH records are kept separately from other hospital records and are not accessible to managers without the consent of the worker, other than in the public interest where patients or others may be at risk. Disclosure of the fact that a particular individual is not cleared to perform EPPs is sensitive because it clearly implies that they are infected with a blood‐borne virus. For that reason such information should be confined to OH and to managers and others who need to know of the person’s EPP status. If a patient notification exercise is undertaken, care must be taken to limit the disclosure of the identity of the infected HCW to as few people as possible. In H (a health care worker) v. Associated Newspapers (2002) a HCW performing EPPs was found to be HIV positive and a patient notification exercise was proposed by the health authority. The HCW obtained a court order against a newspaper that his identity, his specialty and the identity of the health authority should not be published, but he was ordered to disclose to the health authority the records of his private, as well as his NHS, patients.