Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery
Patients’ perception of medical photography☆
Section snippets
Patients and methods
An anonymous questionnaire was designed with questions specifically focused on each of the area of interest (consent process, capturing equipment, distribution and accessibility) in order to determine patients' preferences in relation to medical photography. This was ethically approved by the Clinical Governance Department at Addenbrooke's Hospital. The first 55 questionnaires (Figure 1) were completed by patients in the presence of the first author to ensure terminology used was easily
Capturing equipment
The most significant results were patients' preferences on capturing equipment. 12% of patients agreed to the use of personal camera-phone compared to 16% that of personal camera (p > 0.05), the vast majority of patients (75%) prefer the use of hospital cameras (Figure 2). This preference over personal camera and camera-phone is very highly significant (p < 0.001).
Identifiable vs. Non-identifiable
Patients showed definite preferences to the use of non-identifiable photographs for all purposes (p < 0.001) (Figure 3). This was
Discussion
The use of medical photography was found to be acceptable to most patients; however issues of data protection and confidentiality clearly need to be addressed. Patients' preference to the use of hospital photographic equipment is associated with the presumed assurance of proper use and storage of their images. On the other hand, their lack of acceptance to personal capturing equipments such as cameras and camera-phones indicated their anxiety to the potential unethical use of their medical
Conflicts of interest statement
None Declared.
Funding
None.
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Presented at: The British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons Winter Scientific Meeting, London, England on 7th December 2006 and The Conjoint Scientific Congress by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and The college of Surgeons of Hong Kong Surgery: East Meets West, Hong Kong, China 12th October 2006.