At St Stephen’s Health Centre we believe in person-centred medicine. We encourage you to have online access to your records. This can empower you to manage your health (eg preparing for consultations, reviewing results/ reports/ care plans)
There are some reservations and concerns, however. Firstly, you may find what is written jargon-ridden, or disturbing. There may be hypothetical conditions being considered, which are not proven. Doctors tend to write for a clinician reader, with many abbreviations.
You may have discussed confidentially personal sensitive matters, eg work/ home/ mental health.
From Royal College of General Practitioners
In certain circumstances, if patients may not be able to protect the privacy of their online record, it may be safer to limit a patient’s online record access. Ideally this decision should be done in collaboration with the patient. The risk that patients may view harmful information or confidential third-party information online or may be coerced to share their record with others places a responsibility on practices to maintain high quality records, ready to be shared with the patient, and, when necessary, to consider withholding record access from the patient. The practice is responsible for ensuring that any potentially harmful or confidential third party information in the patient’s record is not visible to the patient online. Such information should be redacted.
If you would like access to your records, please let us know . There is a simple consent process following which you can be granted prospective access , with the above provisos/ exceptions.