Particular care must be taken to obtain the consent of patients for participation in educational activities not directly related to their treatment. Patients have a moral and legal right to exercise control over the circumstances in which they are physically touched and in which personal and clinical information about them is communicated to others. Therefore:

· Clinical teachers must ensure that patients understand that medical students are not qualified doctors and that cooperation in educational activities is entirely voluntary. Students should always be described as "medical students" or "student doctors" and not, for example, as "young doctors", "my colleagues" or "assistants".

· Clinical teachers and students must obtain explicit verbal consent from patients before students—for primarily educational purposes—take their case histories or physically examine them. Patients should be reminded of the primarily educational purpose of any physical examination or case presentation in which they participate. They should understand that their participation is entirely voluntary and resistance should be respected with reassurance that unwillingness to participate will not compromise their care.

· Clinical teachers and students should never perform physical examinations or present cases that are potentially embarrassing for primarily educational purposes without the patient’s verbal consent—both for the physical examination itself and for the number of students present. When individual students are conducting such physical examinations, a chaperone must be present unless the patient explicitly agrees otherwise. Such agreement should only be obtained with the permission of the appropriate clinical teacher and should be recorded in the notes.

· Students should never perform any physical examination on patients under general anaesthetic for primarily educational purposes without their prior written consent, which should be placed within the notes. Patients who are unconscious or incompetent for other reasons must only be involved in primarily educational activity with the explicit agreement of their responsible clinician and after appropriate consent (with children) of someone with parental responsibility or (with adults) after consultation with relatives.

· Clinical teachers should obtain the explicit verbal consent of patients for students to participate in their treatment (suturing, taking blood, delivering babies, etc.). Where the procedure is normally written in the notes, the fact that such consent has been obtained should be recorded. Procedures that do not require supervision should only be undertaken if there is recorded evidence of competence.

· In conformity with the principles of the General Medical Council, students must respect the confidentiality of all information communicated by patients in the course of their treatment or participation in educational activity. Without prior authorisation, no written information about patients by which they might be identified should be removed from the place of treatment. Students should respect the confidentiality of personal information to which they are given access but which is not related to patients’ condition or treatment. Patients should understand that students may be obligated to inform a responsible clinician about information which is so related.

· Clinical teachers are responsible for ensuring that the preceding guidelines are followed. If students are asked by anyone to do the contrary, they must politely refuse, making specific reference to these guidelines. Encouragement of students to ignore these guidelines is unacceptable.