Targeted patient searching a complement, not a work around bmj.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bmj.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Doctors searching their patients’ names online is more common than either they or authorities like to admit. This could have consequences for both trust and health, writes Pavan Amara
Priya is a foundation doctor working for a London NHS trust. Last year she worked in the emergency department and took an HIV positive patient’s history.
“The patient said she was an office administrator,” she says. “My instinct told me there was more.”
At home, Priya googled the patient’s name and found she was an adult film performer. “It raised questions: was she still working in that industry? Was the sex protected? Were they testing her regularly? I also knew she wasn’t taking her antiretroviral drugs.”
Priya wanted to discuss this with a senior colleague, in case of potential safeguarding problems. “I didn’t know how to raise it,” she says. “I was scared of getting into trouble.”
Priya isn’t alone in this quandary. A 2015 survey of Canadian emergency physicians
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