Confidentiality and record keeping
Confidentiality
Occupational Health are committed to providing the highest standards of professional practice and strive to offer you a first-class service that will meet your needs. As a team of registered health professionals with qualifications in Occupational Health, we hold the dignity and privacy of every member of staff in high regard and recognise the importance of confidentiality in all our interactions with you.
The following statement explains our approach to confidentiality and related issues.
We offer a confidential service and will protect any information about your individual circumstances that you choose to share with us.
Occupational Health staff work in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018. Your personal information will be treated respectfully and sensitively and will only be shared with other members of the Occupational Health team if disclosure is necessary for the proper provision of services. Your informed consent will be required if any information needs to be shared outside of the Occupational Health team.
We liaise with the Human Resources team and line managers regarding Occupational Health matters. Personal information conveyed to us will not be disclosed to anyone without your explicit and informed consent (other than in exceptional circumstances as outlined below). However, in order to support you at work we may need to liaise with relevant individuals at the University, although we will not share any personal information about you without your informed consent.
There are rare instances when we may not be able to keep sensitive information confidential. These circumstances would be discussed with you, with our reasoning for why this is necessary. These circumstances are extremely rare and we would endeavour to gain consent from you before providing information to others.
Exceptions would include the following:
- The Occupational Health Practitioner has good reason to believe that you or others may be at risk of serious harm.
- The Occupational Health practitioner may believe that you are not in a position to take responsibility for your own actions.
- The Occupational Practitioner would be liable to civil or criminal court procedures if information was not disclosed.
In such circumstances information is kept to a minimum and only disclosed to relevant others on a need-to-know basis.
We keep paper based and electronic records of the information you provide to us. These records allow us to ensure that you receive the appropriate advice and support that you need. All personal and sensitive data that we hold is processed according to the requirements of current data protection legislation.
The Occupational Health Service collects anonymised statistical information for audit and evaluation purposes only.