Are there any issues of confidentiality or data protection that I should be considering?
The Data Commissioner has advised
"To comply with the fairness element of the first data protection principle, as soon as the decision is made data controllers should inform individuals who are identified as being potentially violent that their records will indicate this. They should also be informed of the incident which led to them being so identified, to whom this information may be passed, and when the decision to identify them as potentially violent will be removed or examined with a view to removal"
In addition the BMA ethics department advise that, violent patient markers must be removable from electronic as well as paper records. The meaning of the tag should be obvious to the healthcare team but not to other people such as patients who may inadvertently catch sight of the records.
Category: At Risk Register. By David Barr, 10/16/2006 11:25 AM