1. Foundations of confidentiality and information governance
Build the five-layer model for confidentiality decisions and distinguish professional duties, common law, data-protection law, statutory authority and organisational governance.
Learning programme · #P12
Confidentiality, Information Governance and Data Protection: Professional Judgement in Healthcare
A ten-module applied professional programme on confidentiality, information governance and current UK data-protection practice, with four-nation awareness and the CLEAR professional-judgement framework.
Who this programme is for
Doctors practising in the UK, with particular relevance to SAS doctors, locally employed doctors, consultants, resident doctors and international medical graduates. Selected material is also relevant to nurses, allied health professionals, managers and other staff handling confidential health information.
Certificate process: Integrated final assessment + optional private reflection + course completion certificate
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2. What information is confidential and who owes the duty
Recognise confidential information across records, conversations, images and digital systems, and understand access, anonymisation, pseudonymisation and confidentiality after death.
3. Consent, implied consent and sharing for direct care
Separate treatment consent, confidentiality consent and data-protection lawful basis, and apply proportionate information sharing for direct care, families and multidisciplinary teams.
4. UK GDPR, DPA 2018 and DUAA in clinical practice
Apply the current UK data-protection framework after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, including lawful bases, special-category data, purpose limitation, access and rectification.
5. Sharing without consent: public interest, serious harm and safeguarding
Use proportional, documented reasoning when confidentiality may need to be breached to protect patients or others, including safeguarding and serious-harm scenarios.
6. Police, courts, regulators, employers and other third parties
Distinguish a request from a legal duty, verify authority, limit disclosure and manage police, court, regulator, employer, insurer and solicitor requests safely.
7. Children, capacity, deceased patients and complex relationships
Apply confidentiality principles where decision-making authority is complex: children and young people, adults lacking capacity, proxies, relatives and deceased patients.
8. Records, access, corrections, retention and information lifecycle
Manage accurate clinical records across creation, access, correction, retention, subject access and secure disposal while preserving historical integrity.
9. Digital professionalism, messaging, images, cloud systems and AI
Apply confidentiality and data-protection principles to email, messaging, photographs, recordings, remote care, cloud platforms and AI without relying on product-specific rules.
10. Data breaches, cyber security, accountability and applied judgement
Recognise and respond to information incidents, preserve evidence, escalate promptly, support breach assessment and integrate the whole programme through complex scenarios.
Course completion
Sign in to complete the integrated final assessment and receive the course certificate.
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