Doctors seek no change on records

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 4

Doctors seek no change on records

PA Wellington The police already had access to enough information on the psychiatric history of criminals, the Medical Association told the Donaldson Commission of Inquiry yesterday.

In a submission that criticised the inquiry as too hasty for adequate public participation, the association’s chairman, Dr Dean Williams, said doctors were opposed to patients’ psychiatric history being held in the Wanganui Computer Centre files.

“At present the police have access to court decisions which inform them of

persons found guilty on grounds of insanity, those admitted to psychiatric hospitals as a result of a crime, and those transferred to a psychiatric hospital from prison,” Dr Williams said. “The association believes this information is sufficient to help police investigations if the patient should come to police attention in the future.

“Moves to give the police wider access would make it very difficult, and in some cases impossible, for doctors to get a full and frank history of patients. “In many circumstances a doctor, to protect the patient, would feel he had to

restrict his clinical reports to an outline of the bare essentials or even to decline to record anything.” Dr Williams said patients’ psychiatric conditions often changed, and could be quite unrelated to a crime under police investigation. Doctors recognised they might breach patient confidentiality in the public interest and in exceptional circumstances, he said.

In Britain there was an informal agreement between the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Medical Association. Such a procedure might

work in New Zealand, Dr Williams said. The Donaldson tragedy could not have been averted, even if full information about him was available to the police, according to a senior nursing supervisor at Porirua Hospital, Mr Russell Flahiue.

He advocated stronger community supervision of psychiatric patients when he made a second round of submissions for the Public Service Association. He also criticised the care given to patients on trial leave.