We acknowledge that disclosing an illness and the consequences of that disclosure can be very difficult.

No information about your identity is known to the Service when you access any of the Services. We will only know that someone has attended to facilitate the internal billing process.

If any of you contact Leslie or Ed for advice , you do not need to identify yourself unless you wish to do so.

However it is not in a doctors personal or professional interest to continue to treat patents if unfit to do so safely. Patients cannot be put at risk in this situation and serious consequences can be avoided if the sick doctor stops treating patients until fully recovered.

We are guided by the Faculty of Occupational Medicine and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy in developing our code of practice in this difficult situation.

All sessions with anyone in the service are confidential, provided a Doctor remains Fit to Practise safely or , if not , removes themselves completely from patient contact until recovered. We will not otherwise disclose any information about that Doctor to any third party.

If , after appropriate consideration, we develop significant concerns that a Doctor may not be Fit to Practise, we will observe the following protocol

1. Discuss our concerns with the Doctor and encourage them to take appropriate and timely action.
2. If the Doctor lacks insight or fails to remove him or herself from clinical work then we will contact the Secretary of the Cleveland LMC giving detail of our concerns. He undertakes to make further enquiries. If appropriate we may contact the GMC Fitness to Practise division

Where the Secretary is unavailable the Chairman of the LMC will deputise.

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