Consent and use of information

Consent

It is the responsibility of the responsible clinician to obtain consent for testing and storage. Our laboratories assume this has been done upon receipt of the sample and do not routinely check consent has been obtained.

Receipt of the sample and request form establishes an agreement to perform testing.

The following must be clearly stated on the referral form:-

Test required
Clinical details
Relevant family history
Mother’s details for prenatal testing requests

Where specific, informed consent is required for testing, this will be prompted on the request form. This is particularly appropriate for testing under the Human Tissue Act.

Further information on consent can be found in the following webpages:

Use of information

Pathology complies with the North Bristol NHS Trust policies to safeguard patient infomation Information Governance | North Bristol NHS Trust (nbt.nhs.uk).

Where there is a requirement to share information with a third party (e.g. regulatory or compliance body, or for monitoring of quality standards) information, comprising minimum data sets, will be only be shared once it has been fully anonymised.