From: The role of undergraduate medical students training in respect for patient confidentiality
• The Spanish Patient Privacy Protocol promotes respect for patient confidentiality among all Health Sciences students. | |
• Medical students were aware of the obligation of confidentiality although a high percentage possessed copies of non-anonymized patient CH reports outside the healthcare environment and were not always adequately identified. | |
• Despite restrictions on access to patients' CHs, more than half of the students used a health professional's password without the prior express consent of patients and mostly without the anonymization of the CHs. | |
• The role of university centres together with healthcare institutions is to promote theoretical training related to confidentiality and guarantee continuing medical education. | |
• A more feasible approach would be recommendable to ensure the educational objective of having access to CHs by establishing a direct protocolized request to ask for the patient’s consent. |