Doctors should not Google their patients to discover more information about their medical history and lifestyle, campaigners said today.
Experts have demanded that strong action be taken against this unspoken habit.
Dennis Reed, director of over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, said There are no circumstances in which searching for patients online is justified.
Mr Reed said it was “unprofessional” and could “influence” a doctor’s opinion, adding: “If permission is not given, it should not be happening.”
“If a doctor has told someone to give up alcohol and the patient makes their own decision not to, but then the doctor looks it up on social media and sees the individual with a glass in their hand, that seems like a complete infringement”. of civil liberty.’
Doctors cannot access a patient’s personal information unless they have a legitimate reason to see it, according to the General Medical Council (GMC).
Mr Reed wants “examples” to be given to discourage other doctors from searching for patients online, to prevent the habit from getting out of control.
But others say that if a doctor can justify Googling his patient for medical reasons, then he should allow it.
A doctor MailOnline spoke to, on condition of anonymity, admitted to Googling a patient who had been excluded from a GP practice for violent and aggressive behavior and another who they believed was committing “prescription fraud”.
Currently, there are no official General Medical Council (GMC) rules preventing doctors from searching for patients on Google or social media.
Doctors searching for their patients online is “more common than they or authorities want to admit,” according to a study. article published in the BMJ last year.
He pointed to several studies that found that doctors Googled their patients.
one 2015 survey of Canadian emergency physicians and medical students found that 64 of 530 responses admitted to having used Google to research a patient.
Another United States survey of 2018 found that of 392 genetic counselors and trainees, 130 confessed to having looked up a patient’s name online or had considered it.
It also revealed that 110 said they had visited a patient’s social media site.
The magazine mentioned several cases of this commonly violated taboo in anonymous confessions made by doctors.
A doctor working for a London NHS trust in the emergency department revealed that he took this action after taking the history of an HIV positive patient.
The patient had told the doctor that she was an office administrator, but the doctor suspected there was more to the patient’s history.
So when the doctor got home, he Googled the patient’s name and discovered she was an adult film actress.
‘This raised questions: Was he still working in that industry? Was sex protected? Were you being tested regularly? “I also knew that he was not taking his antiretroviral medications,” the doctor told the BMJ.
The doctor wanted to discuss this with a senior colleague, in case of potential safeguarding issues, but did not do so for fear of getting in trouble for how the information had been discovered.
Another anonymous case raised in the BMJ detailed how an NHS foundation year doctor searched online for more details about a patient who had been admitted with a femoral neck fracture.
The doctor explained that the patient had a history of factitious disorder, a mental condition in which a person pretends to be or acts intentionally to get sick or injured.
After believing the patient “faked a seizure to get attention” during the doctor’s night shift, the doctor decided to Google the patient because he was “upset.”
The doctor found a Twitter account where the patient had posted photos of herself in the hospital and said she was there after a terminal cancer diagnosis.
However, the doctor did not tell anyone about the information discovered on Twitter because “they did not want the consequences.”
Some say that if a doctor can justify Googling his patient for medical reasons, then he should allow it.
“I’m not sorry I Googled it, it ended a difficult night,” the doctor told the BMJ. ‘It is publicly available information. I didn’t break any rules.’
But activists say Googling a patient is a potential breach of trust between patient and doctor, if there is no justifiable reason to search for them online.
“If you are willing to write it in the medical record and you are willing to justify it to your colleague and to the patient themselves, there is no problem,” says Sam Smith of the campaign group Medconfidential.
However, he suggests drawing the line if there is no medical need to search for the patient online.
A hypothetical example he gives that would not be justifiable is if a young doctor searched for a young woman on Instagram after they were in the ER.
He also explains that an emergency doctor should not need to gather more information about a patient’s lifestyle since he or she will likely not see him or her again.
But on the other hand, a primary care doctor, who sees a patient much more regularly, for example, might be justified in seeking such information, he added.
‘If you’re an emergency doctor, you came off your shift and looked them up online, you’ll never see them again. But it’s different if you have an ongoing relationship with a patient.”
A GMC spokesperson said: ‘Trust is fundamental to maintaining relationships between doctors and their patients, and between the general public and the medical profession.
‘Our main guidance, Good Medical Practice, is clear that patients should be able to trust doctors with their lives and health.
‘Doctors must ensure that their conduct justifies their patients’ trust in them and the public’s trust in their profession.
‘And they must not use their professional position to maintain an inappropriate sexual or emotional relationship with a patient or someone close to them.
‘Finally, doctors must be prepared to justify the actions they take.
“We consider concerns that raise questions about a doctor’s fitness to practice.”