Sørlandet Hospital should be accessible and open to inspection, and practices transparency. Employees should contribute with clear, relevant, and correct information. The Communications Department helps journalists to get in contact with employees in the hospital.
Official spokespersons for the hospital trust are the chair of the board and the managing director. Clinic directors and staff directors are spokespersons for their respective professional and management areas. Department heads, section leaders, unit leaders, project leaders, or others with their own area of responsibility speak on this. Employee representatives and safety representatives speak on matters relevant to their roles.
The hospital protects patients and relatives from unwanted press contact. If patients and relatives wish to be interviewed on hospital grounds, we will facilitate this. Contact the leader of the relevant department/ward, or contact the Communications Department for assistance. A patient can also grant media the right to access medical records.
It is permitted to photograph and film outside the buildings, but please respect privacy. You cannot identify patients or relatives without their explicit consent. Be particularly careful near emergency rooms.
If you want to film with a drone, contact the Communications Department.
Information about health condition after an accident or violent act
From and including February 2021, Sørlandet Hospital discontinued its practice of providing the media with information about the health condition of patients who have been involved in accidents or violent acts. This guideline applies to all of the hospital's treatment locations and facilities.
Privacy and confidentiality
All patients have the right to protection against the dissemination of information about personal and health matters. This also applies to people who have been involved in accidents or violent acts that are reported in the media.
We have great understanding for the press's role and need to inform the public in matters of public interest, but the hospital trust's safeguarding of confidentiality and privacy must take precedence over the media's information needs. Data protection officers at the hospital trusts in Norway have pointed out that the information previously given to the media should be treated as personal data covered by the General Data Protection Regulation and statutory confidentiality.
At the scene of an accident, the police are responsible for providing information to the media, as previously. The police make their own assessments of what information they can and want to share with the media in such cases. Healthcare personnel have a duty of confidentiality even towards the police, with a few exceptions. The police therefore only receive information about a patient from the hospital where there is a legal basis for providing such information.
Information from the hospital in major incidents
In major accidents with many casualties, such as terrorist incidents, natural disasters, and the like, the hospital's crisis management team will cooperate with the police on what information can be given to the media. It will be natural to, for example, provide information about the number of injured and the type of injuries generally being treated, depending on the incident. The condition of individual patients will not be given due to privacy considerations.
