Medical confidentiality and multidisciplinary work: child sexual abuse and mental handicap registers.

We received a short paper from Dr. Williams raising the issue of confidentiality as encountered by general practitioners in cases of sexual abuse. Similarly, we received a letter from Dr. Singh describing conflict with his local social services department about the confidentiality information requested by the department for inclusion in a mental handicap. We asked a general practitioner, a consultant psychiatrist, a paediatrician, an expert in medical ethics, and a solicitor to on these two cases.