Hello

GP practices have for many years taken videos of patient consultations. It
has also been done in A&E depts. These are used for educational purposes -
to analyse approaches to consultations, transactional analysis, addressing
patient hidden needs etc.

I understand the need to obtaining consent from the patient and respect of
patient confidentiality has a great part in video taping patients, but this
is not the area I wanted to focus on. I wanted to ask something slightly
different....

I want to address the issues surrounding consent from the NHS institution
where one works - in my case the ambulance service, to allow the
practitioner to the authorisation to ask patients for permission to gain
consent to tape for 'peer driven quality improvement programmes' (PDQI).

In my experience most patients don't have a problem with being video taped,
the problem I see is getting over the hurdle of the NHS dept to allow the
practitioner the authorisation to ask for patient consent in the first
place.

Your views surrounding this subject is welcome but I am really asking if
anyone has addressed this issue successfully within their own dept and how
did you overcome the challenges that faced you.

Thanks
Mike Bjarkoy
Paramedic Emergency Care Practitioner
Cornwall