Hopefully this is the sort of medical question that is entirely allowed!
I’m sorting out my aunt’s affairs and I’ve started discovering documents from my grandmother, who was a doctor and a surgeon. She graduated as a doctor in 1913 and served in WW1 (behind the lines) and later was involved in the local medical scene. I’ve yet to come across any actual medical records of people, but I’m coming across things like X-rays and student notes. Obvously, I can’t just put these in the bin, because particular people might be identified. Whom should I contact about the proper disposal of these items? The local GP? My local GP? The General Medical Council?
I’d recommend a shredder, they do a decent job if you get the right one then deposit the aftermath in several bags and throw them out at different trash days. Or just have a big ol’ bonfire and burn em’!
I would suggest you call a hospital, they’ll surely have ways of destroying or otherwise properly disposing of them. Also, if there’s anyway you can do it anonymously, it’ll take the liability off of you. The easiest way would be to call the hospital and asked to be transferred to the maintenence department. I only say this because my FIL is the head of maintence at a hospital and I know he would know what to do with the type of stuff you have, since one of the things he deals with is everything coming into and out of (garbage) the building.
If they are 50 y/o records I’d consider their disposal trivial. The odds that someone is going to read them, discover some personal medical secret, and act on it, are negligible.
i would suggest donating these files to your nearest teaching hospital… anonymously.
you never know, these might just be the kind of medical records that are needed to (in)validate some long-term study or another, or just be generally useful in some we-used-to-do-but-now-we-don’t-and-here’s-why kinda way.
and way out there, but way cool, what if you helped solve some near century-old murder case or something?
I am almost certain that this is a completely straightforward case - that you have the right to destroy them, that any concern about confidentiality is more about good manners than legal requirements and that no one is going to be bothered about this in any way.
But I can think of a few complications that might just be relevant. Medical files generated by the NHS are ‘public records’ and thus fall within the scope of the very complicated statutory regulations for the preservation and destruction of such records. But the private papers of medical personnel won’t be. There can be a grey area between these, as a doctor might retain a document which really ought to have ended up in the official files. But that shouldn’t be an issue, as the equivalent official files will almost certainly have been destroyed anyway.
The chances are that, whether official or private, your grandmother’s papers are just the sort of files the most appropriate archive will not want cluttering up their shelf space. Old medical files are routinely destroyed. The last thing they’ll want will be more of them, unless they are very obviously significant. (The one thing that might be thought be significant is that she was a woman.)
If I was you, I would just bin them. But if you’re in doubt, either contact your local county record office (which probably won’t want them, but which should be able to give you the appropriate advice) or, more ambitiously, the National Advisory Service of the National Archives (for whom this will be a trivial, easily answered query).
