New guidance for using medical recordings in teaching

New advice and guidance on making and using clinical healthcare recordings funded by the Strategic Content Alliance for learning and teaching launches today.

Clinical images, videos and other recordings are vital to good teaching and learning within the health care professions. Increasingly these are originated outside the institution that wishes to use them.  This raises a number of legal, ethical and other issues relating to their re-use.

Debra Hiom, the project's manager at IT Services R&D/ILRT, University of Bristol added:

"Students and teachers increasingly use pre-existing patient images from the web without adequately considering copyright or how they have been consented.  The new materials will help individuals be clear how resources can or can not be reused."

Listen to Debra explaining the issues that professionals face when using recordings and how the new guidance can help.

The materials aim to help users of clinical healthcare recordings to:

  • Understand how to deal with consent issues in using recordings of patients in learning and teaching resources
  • Understand the difference between copyright ownership and licensing and how to use resources shared under licence;
  • Demonstrate best practice in 'digital professionalism' and manage risks when creating sustainable teaching resources
  • Be better placed to share resources with colleagues.

Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content Alliance at JISC, said: "I am delighted to see that the significant advances being made in medical recordings, networks and other technological innovation within the education, research and health are being matched with clarity in the advance and guidance being offered to clinical and non-clinical staff alike through this project.  This work builds on from earlier JISC investments in improving the skills required in the digital age."

The guidance is aimed primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording for learning and teaching.  It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.

Dr Jane Williams, Director of e-Learning in the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Bristol, said: "There is already a wealth of advice and guidance but it is currently overwhelming.  The new advice and guidance attempts to provide an easy navigable  route through a very sensitive area of professional practice."

The materials have been created by a collaboration of cross-sector organisations and individuals, including the General Medical  council (GMC), Wellcome Trust, Institute for Medical Illustrators, University of Bristol and  Newcastle University.

The project has been funded through JISC's Strategic and Content Alliance and will be hosted by JISC Digital Media.

Read the advice and guidance