Readers' Blog: Confidential clause that protects the doctors
Alison O’Connor (Irish Examiner, September 14) may well be right about how Dr Gabriel Scally’s CervicalCheck report is a classic of its kind, and thank goodness there was no tribunal instead.
Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out what a tribunal would have done.
As usual the courts would have bent over backwards to protect the good names of those involved, in this case anonymous doctors who said things that should have them at least in danger of being struck off (and the only thing that would prevent that here is being a first-time offender).
I think particularly of the doctor who told his patient that nuns do not get cervical cancer.
A doctor who disapprovingly lectures a patient on their sex life is, by definition, in the wrong job.
But you can be sure the courts would be more worried about the doctor’s good name, probably to the extent of protecting his anonymity.
Only in Ireland does doctor-patient confidentiality actually protect the doctor.
