Patient consent and confidentiality

PAMS follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for patient consent and confidentiality focusing anonymization.

PAMS patient consent policy: Any article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires the patient’s explicit consent before we can publish it. If consent cannot be obtained due to non-availability of the patient and in addition patient cannot be traced, then the publication will be possible if the information can be sufficiently anonymized.

For a Case Report, a signed patient consent form is required for every case report submitted about a living individual without exception. For those who may lack capacity to consent, best practice will be to take consent on their own behalf and minors from their near ones preferably parents and guardian.

Deceased patients: If the patient is deceased PAMS requests the author to seek permission from the next of kin as a matter of courtesy and medical ethics. If the relatives are not contactable we will balance the worthwhileness of the case, the likelihood of identification and the likelihood of causing offence if identified in making a decision on whether we should publish without a relatives consent.

For Case Reports: A document must be submitted confirming that all the efforts have been made to contact the family and that the paper has been sufficiently anonymized not to cause harm to the patients family.

Children: If the patient is under the age of 18, it is required to take consent from parents and guardian. Where the child has sufficient understanding of the consent process and its implications, the child must also sign the consent form. For younger children, even if parents’ consent, authors should consider whether the child might regret publication of his her identifiable details in the future.  

That ultimate decision to use material involving children (and those unable to legally consent for themselves) will rest with the editor of the journal. The Editor will consider the possibility of future damage to an individual from publication of the material about them as a minor. For controversial cases, additional advice will be sought from our ethics committee.

Patients who lack capacity: If the patient lacks the mental capacity to make a decision about publication our advice is that no one can give consent on behalf of the patient. Even if someone has this power, by means for example of a health and welfare power of attorney, it has to be exercised in the best interest of the patient. There may be some benefit to the patient in having his or her case described in a publication, but usually this is not obvious or certain. In such cases we will normally require any personal information to be anonymized or will not be able to publish it.

Images of patients: Our policy on obtaining consent for publication of pictures or videos of patients is a subset of our general policy on patient confidentiality. If there is any chance that a patient may be identified from a photograph or other static or moving image, or from its legend or accompanying text, we need the patient’s written consent to publication in PAMS.

• Images- such as X ray, laparoscopic images, ultrasound images, pathology slides, or images of undistinctive parts of the body- or multimedia files (e.g. video, audio) may be used without consent as long as they are anonymized by the removal of any identifying marks and are not accompanied by text that could reveal the patients identity through clinical or personal detail.
• An exception to this policy of needing consent for recognizable photographs of individuals is when we use photographs from picture agencies to illustrate news stories and other articles. We state where these photographs have come from and we rely on the fact that the agencies and their photographers have obtained the relevant permissions from the people appearing in the photographs. If we doubt that someone photographed could have given consent- owing for example to severe mental illness or learning disability- we will use our discretion and avoid using such images.

Patient consent form: Please note we do not accept forms that are electronically signed. They should be properly signed by the patients, subject or next of kin.