Patient access to health records: What are the cultural and professional barriers to implementation?
The second British Medical Journal webinar on the hot topic of Record Access by patients has been published on YouTube.
In this one, the discussion focusses on cultural and professional barriers to implementing record sharing with patients.
Barriers can include:
Concerns about patients becoming anxious if they see data that worries them, without news being broken to them by a clinician, particularly what test results should be made available when
Consequent concerns about professional indemnity
Concerns around providing appropriate support to patients if they are getting bad news in a resource constrained environment
Enabling shared decision-making, when ordering a test, discuss what the outcomes of the test might be up-front
Equity of access, not all patients have access to suitable digital technology, or the digital skills to use these tools
Concerns about increased demand from patients wanting clarification on what they are reading
Some medical schools are now teaching relevant skills to student medics to work with patients who have full record access
One stand-out point for me was when we give consent to a doctor to view our GP record, do we know what we are giving consent to, if we've never had access to that record, food for thought!
This is an in-depth discussion and well worth listening to