Confidentiality and carers

The responsible, appropriate and proportionate sharing of information is crucial to the delivery of care to our service users. The Trust expects staff to share information about our service users and will always support staff who act in this manner. We also expect our staff to listen to our service users, their families and carer, and where necessary act on what they say.

We must listen and engage with all health and social professionals, family members, and carers; they are supporting our service users, but it does not mean that you must share confidential information.
Confidentiality must never be given as a reason for not listening.

Responsible means:

Acting in the best interest of the service user to support their care.
Using professional judgment and considering all the circumstances.
Documenting decisions in the electronic patient record.

Appropriate means:

Considering the service user, and whether they expect their information to be shared.
Deciding that other parties need this information to support care.

Proportionate means:

Have I considered if I am sharing enough, or too little, information?
Will this decision have a positive impact on the care of the service user?

What are the Caldicott principles?

The Caldicott Principles have been in use for more than 20 years and should underpin our information sharing to protect service user information. Using them will help you achieve a balance when sharing information. The eight principles are:

Justify the purpose for using confidential information.
Only use confidential information when absolutely necessary.
Use the minimum information that is required.
Access to confidential information should be on a strict need-to-know basis.
Everyone must understand their responsibilities.
Understand and comply with the law.
The duty to share personal information can be as important as the duty to have regard for patient confidentiality.
Inform the expectations of patients and service users about how their confidential information is to be used. (no surprises)

Our Caldicott Guardian is Dr Viv Peeler. You can contact them by emailing: caldicott.guardian@nsft.nhs.uk