British journal of nursing (Mark Allen Publishing)
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The last two articles considered the right of others under Data Protection legislation to access a patient's records and the right to access medical reports for employment or insurance purposes. This article considers the duty of confidentiality and the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998, which protect the confidentiality of health records.
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This article is the first in a two-part series which explores pain and its management from a physiological perspective. Pain is a common experience which is often inadequately managed in hospital and community settings. While nurses are in a key position to contribute to successful pain management there are frequent accounts in the literature that nurses lack knowledge about pain management. ⋯ This article introduces nurses to the components in the pain pathway and describes nociceptors which respond to pain stimuli and identifies pain fibres which carry pain information to the spinal cord. The processing of pain in the spinal cord is explained and the role of the brain in the manifestation of the pain experience is also explored. The gate control theory of pain and the more recent neuromatrix theory are discussed.
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This article explores what rights persons, other than the patient, have to access health records which come under Data Protection Act and other statutory provisions. These other persons could include the relatives of a patient, the parents of a child or those concerned with the estate of a deceased person. In addition, there are other rights of disclosure recognized by the common law and these will be considered in a later article.
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A patient has a legal right to access personal information held by health professionals on the basis of statutory provisions, such as the Data Protection Act 1998 and the regulations made under that Act, the Access to Health Reports Act 1988 (which is considered in a later article), and also on the basis of the common law, i.e. judge made or case law. Neither legal rights, however, give the patient an absolute right, but are qualified.