BobC wrote:
On 15 Sep, 09:15, BobC wrote:
"A friend" who works for in the medical profession told me about a
patient who arrived for an appointment. He asked for his name, but as
he was foreign couldn't understand it, so asked him to spell it. In
response he offered his driving licence to copy it from.

But on seeing the licence, the picture was nothing like the person
presenting it. In fact not even the same skin colour!

I said "Well I assume you asked him to sit in the waiting room, while
you went and called the police!"
"Oh no we can't do anything like that, patient confidentiality means
we are not allowed to do anything about it".

This sounds balmy to me. This is surely important not only to the
authorities but also the doctor who will effectively be treating a
different person to who he thinks he is.

Does the goup feel this use of "patient confidentiality" is correct.
Discuss!

Thanks for all the replies. They have all concentrated on the medical
side of it though, "should the doctor treat the patient".

What I was really getting at was, should he have reported to the
police the fact that someone was going around with a false/someone
else's driving licence?
If someone had presented that to me, I would have, but I'm not in the
medical profession.
As part of my work I do get presented with driving licences and have a
duty of confidentiality, but if someone tried to fool me by presenting
a clearly wrong one, the confidentiality would got out the window and
I'd report it!



What are you actually reporting? It isn't an offence to carry somebody
else's driving license.

Are you concerned that the carrier is trying to obtain services that
they aren't entitled to or that they are illegally here or something?