Could your doctor be GOOGLING you? Calls for crack down on unspoken habit trends now
Doctors should not be Googling patients to uncover more information about their medical history and lifestyle, campaigners said today.
Experts have demanded a crackdown on the unspoken habit.
Dennis Reed, director of over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, said there are no circumstances where it's justifiable to search for patients online.
Mr Reed said it is 'unprofessional' and could 'colour' a doctor's views, adding: 'If the permission is not given, it shouldn't be happening.
'If a doctor has told somebody to give up alcohol and the patient takes their own decision not to, but then the doctor looks them up on social media to see the individual with a glass in their hand, that does appear to be a complete infringement of civil liberty.'
Doctors are not allowed to access patient's personal information unless they have a legitimate reason to view it, according to the General Medical Council (GMC)
Mr Reed wants 'examples to be made' to discourage other doctors from looking up patients online, to prevent the habit from getting out of hand.
But others say if a doctor can justify googling their patient for medical reasons then it should be allowed.
One doctor MailOnline spoke to, under the condition of anonymity, admitted to Googling a patient who had been excluded from a GP practice for violent and aggressive behaviour and another who they believed was committing 'prescription fraud'.
Currently, there are no official General Medical Council (GMC) rules which prevent doctors from searching for patients on Google or social media.
Medics searching their patients online is 'more common than either they or authorities like to admit', according to an article published in the BMJ last year.
It pointed to several studies that found medics to be googling their patients.
One 2015 survey of Canadian emergency physicians and medical students found 64 out of 530 responses admitted to using Google to research a patient.
Another US survey from 2018 uncovered that out of 392 genetic counsellors and trainees, 130 confessed to searching a patients name online or had considered it.
It also revealed that 110 said they had looked at a patient's social media site.
The journal raised several instances of this commonly broken taboo in anonymous confessions made by doctors.
One doctor working for a London NHS trust in the emergency department revealed they took this step after taking a HIV positive patient’s history.
The patient had told the medic that she was an office administrator, but the doctor suspected there was more to the patient's history.
So, when the doctor got home they googled the patient's name and discovered she was an adult film performer.
'It raised questions: was she
