Diary Entry - 16/11/06 - When are private and confidential medical notes not private and confidential

Diary Entry - 16/11/06

The following is a letter I have written to a health professional with respect to a current custody battle at the High Court where I am a witness in these proceedings. Seeking advice and confirmation on just how private, personal and confidential ‘our’ medical notes are. It seems they are not at all. In choosing to support my partner, I must disclose all my GP notes, consultation notes, Priory inpatient notes to the other side, or the judge. I have no choice in this matter, so my whole personal life history is there for lawyers and solicitors to read and make sense of.

In doing so, and learning the hard way, we both feel that it is important to clarify what ‘notes’ are actually taken, have to be taken and or taken if agreed by the patient in a consultation or therapy session, to which we choose to go to and pay for!

Dear Sir
In order for us to be responsible in managing our BiPolar
illness, we seek the advice of professionals, such as Consultants and
Therapists.

This is not forced on us, neither is it something we ‘must’ do. We choose to.

However, in this process, out thoughts, our actions, secrets and drug
history and subsequent assessment of us is recorded in the guise of
handwritten notes.

Naively, I thought these were ‘private and personal’, only to discover
it is not the case. In the Court of Law, specifically Family Law, all
private medical, GP and inpatient notes must be disclosed.

This then causes us both much concern over the the very things
we choose to seek ‘your/others’ advice and guidance on. If the last few
weeks have anything to go by, then Anna and I are both reluctant to
shed any ‘true’ feelings or ‘concerns’ as they are recorded and maybe
used against us further down the line.

It is not going to be the case that we will be free from scrutiny once
this particular case is over. We have already been
made to feel like lepers because we have a Mental Illness. It is
likely that our ‘behaviour’ will be monitored and watched, and if need be, our records
disclosed again over the forthcoming years.

Our dilemma is that we still wish to seek therapy, guidance and
clinical direction, but in doing we need to be safe in the knowledge
that our ’secrets’ and ‘inner thoughts’ are kept just that.

If we are not able to direct the way our respective sessions go, in
respect of general session notes this leaves us both very isolated.

This is a rather long winded way of asking ‘you’ to clarify ‘your’
position is respect of the notes ‘you’ record for each session, where
advice is just advice, where secrets and just secrets and where ‘your’
professional duty as a consultant intervenes.