Could it be that your doctor is Googling you? Calls for a crackdown on unspoken habits

Doctors should not be allowed to Google patients to find out more information about their medical history and lifestyle, campaigners said today.

Experts have demanded a crackdown on the unspoken custom.

Dennis Reed, director of the over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, said there are no circumstances in which it is justified to search for patients online.

Mr Reed said it is ‘unprofessional’ and could ‘colour’ a doctor’s opinion, adding: ‘If consent is not given then it should not be happening.

‘If a doctor has told someone to stop drinking alcohol and the patient makes the decision not to do so, but the doctor then looks him up on social media and sees the person with a glass in hand, then it seems that’s a direct violation. of civil liberty.”

Mr Reed wants “examples made” to discourage other doctors from seeking out patients online, to prevent the practice from getting out of hand.

But others say if a doctor can justify Googling his patient for medical reasons, then it should be allowed.

A doctor MailOnline spoke to, on condition of anonymity, admitted to Googling a patient who had been excluded from a GP practice for violent and aggressive behavior and another who they believed was committing ‘prescription fraud’.

Currently, there are no official General Medical Council (GMC) rules preventing doctors from searching for patients on Google or social media.

Doctors seeking their patients online is more common than they and authorities want to admit, a doctor said article published last year in the BMJ.

It pointed to several studies showing that doctors Google their patients.

One 2015 questionnaire of Canadian emergency physicians and medical students found that 64 out of 530 responses admitted to using Google to research a patient.

Another US questionnaire in 2018 revealed that 130 out of 392 genetic counselors and trainees admitted to searching for or thinking about a patient’s name online.

It also revealed that 110 said they had viewed a patient’s social media site.

The magazine highlighted several examples of this often-broken taboo in anonymous confessions from doctors.

A doctor working for a London NHS trust in the emergency department revealed that they had taken this step after taking the history of an HIV-positive patient.

The patient had told the doctor that she was an office administrator, but the doctor suspected there was more to the patient’s history.

So when the doctor got home, they Googled the patient’s name and discovered she was an adult film performer.

‘It raised questions: was she still working in that industry? Was the sex protected? Did they test her regularly? I also knew she was not taking her antiretroviral medications,” the doctor told the BMJ.

The doctor wanted to discuss this with a senior colleague, in case of possible safety concerns, but did not for fear of getting into trouble for the way they had discovered the information.

Another anonymous case featured in the BMJ described how an NHS junior doctor searched online for more details about a patient admitted with a femoral neck fracture.

The doctor explained that the patient had a history of factitious disorder, a mental condition in which a person pretends or acts purposefully to become ill or injured.

After believing that the patient had “faked a seizure to get attention” during the doctor’s night shift, the doctor decided to Google the patient because he was “annoyed.”

The doctor found a Twitter account where the patient had posted photos of herself at the hospital, saying she was there after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

However, the doctor did not tell anyone about the information discovered on Twitter because they “didn’t want the consequences.”

“I’m not sorry I Googled her, it ended a difficult night,” the doctor told the BMJ. ‘It is publicly available information. I didn’t break any rules.’

But campaigners say Googling a patient is a potential breach of trust between patient and doctor, if there is no legitimate reason to search for them online.

“If you are happy to write it in the medical file and justify it to your colleague and to the patient himself, that is no problem,” says Sam Smith of campaign group Medconfidential.

However, he does suggest that the line is drawn when there is no medical need to search for the patient online.

A hypothetical example he gives that would be unjustifiable is if a young male doctor looked up a young woman on Instagram after she was in the emergency room.

He also explains that an ER doctor doesn’t need to collect more lifestyle information about a patient because he or she likely won’t see them again.

But on the other hand, a general practitioner, who sees a patient much more often, may be justified in seeking out such information, he added.

“If you’re an ER doctor and you’re off duty, and you look for them online, you’ll never see them again. But that’s different when you have an ongoing relationship with a patient.’

A spokesperson for GMC said: ‘Trust is integral to maintaining relationships between doctors and their patients, and between the wider public and the medical profession.

‘Our core guideline, Good Medical Practice, is clear that patients should be able to entrust their lives and health to doctors.

‘Physicians must ensure that their behavior justifies their patients’ trust in them and the public’s trust in the profession.

‘And they must not use their professional position to enter into a sexual or inappropriate emotional relationship with a patient or someone close to them.

‘Finally, doctors must be prepared to justify the actions they take.

“We take concerns into account when questions arise about a physician’s fitness to practice.”