About these Guidance Materials

The main objectives of the guidance are to:

  • Help you behave ethically and with consideration
  • Introduce you to the special issues which arise when recordings are made in a clinical setting
  • Provide practical guidance on how to make and use clinical recordings for learning and teaching
  • Help you understand and meet the obligations which arise from doing this

The principles and related guidance materials were developed through a collaboration of cross-sector organisations, to encourage shared understandings across clinical and educational settings about good practice for the creation and use of medical recordings for educational purposes. A British Medical Recordings Task Force was set up to oversee the work and this group developed the four main principles on which the guidance materials are based.
The principles cover consent to make and use recordings of patients and other people, ensuring that ownership and licensed use of recordings are respected and that professional responsibilities for the onward storage, use and sharing of those recordings are carried out.

The guidance attempts to provide broad guidelines for making and using recordings for learning and teaching purposes (generally outside the NHS); it does not attempt to cover guidance concerning recordings for treatment or research purposes. It also does not cover some of the unique issues concerning the creation of recordings of cadaveric material - you should ask advice from a senior pathologist on this issue. The guidance material has been developed in consultation with the wider clinical and healthcare communities; please see the Acknowledgements section for a full list of individuals and organisations who have contributed to, and commented on, this material.

The materials have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License which means that you are free to use the materials in their entirety or to reuse parts of the guidance according to your requirements. In either case you must ensure that full Attribution is given to the original authors and that the Disclaimer statement is made available with any use of these materials.

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