The legislation and charter are extremely important because confidentiality is a priority rule that needs to be followed. There are a number of medical tests taken everyday in hospitals, so new information is found out constantly. Other personal information about patients is kept on the hospital data systems such as e.g. address, telephone number, illnesses, medication etc. If information like this is given to any other person with out the patient’s permission, who ever breach’s the code of conduct would be automatically dismissed from their job.
I think this is a good act put in place because people can be confident about any medical problems they come across. This allows people to be treated and not feel they have to be embarrassed that their problems will be shared with other individuals. Details taken are more accurate and up to date; this also is a positive factor about the act, keeping up to date details records and summarises the personal health of the individual and progress made.
The information should be kept in a secure place so that unauthorized people are unable to access others personal information. The information should be kept on a system that only employees at the hospital can access. This is usually secured with a personal username and password. Some information is held from patients until professional discover the problem, but they must not hold these longer than necessary.
All information that is taken must only be relevant to patient’s health. If information is given by patients to the professionals in the hospital that are going to or is harming their self or others, this is the only case scenario that the information wouldn’t be kept private. This is because knowing other individuals are or that individual is being abused, suicidal etc the professional is putting the patient in danger and they wouldn’t be getting the support they need.
This act allows people to see all information about them self, but if this cost an excess £400 the individual would have to pay this to see the information. In this case, the privilege of this is only affordable to those who are well off.
M3
How this promotes diversity?
This piece of legislation helps to promote diversity in a health and social care environment and the information patients give is protected under the Data Protection Act 1998. It does this by not judging individuals because of their ethnicity, gender, age etc and other personal information given. By keeping personal information protected this keeps it out of the hands of individuals who may act in a prejudicial way.
Employers employ from a wide range of different back grounds and this helps provide equal opportunity. When a candidate who has applied for job role sends their personal information to a certain organization, their curriculum vitae is in the hands of the interviewer and their personal information is put to one side. This helps promote diversity because by not looking at individuals personal information they then are unable to judge, stereo type or discriminate against them.
