Cardiff Hair Clinic takes patient confidentiality seriously. As a GMC-registered medical practitioner, Dr Frances Bowerman follows the GMC’s published guidance on patient confidentiality, alongside our obligations under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. This policy explains what that means in practice.

We hold personal and health-related information you provide to us, including contact details, consultation and treatment records, clinical photographs (where you’ve consented), and correspondence relating to your care.

Access to your information is limited to those who need it to provide your care or run the clinic — principally Dr Frances Bowerman and a small number of authorised support staff involved in your booking or treatment. Anyone with access to your information is bound by professional and contractual confidentiality obligations.

We store clinical and enquiry records securely, with access limited to authorised staff, and use secure systems for our website and booking form. Where paper records are used, they’re kept in a locked, access-controlled environment.

In most cases, we will always ask for your consent before sharing your information with anyone outside the clinic. There are limited circumstances, consistent with GMC guidance and the law, where we may need to share information without your specific consent — for example:

– Where required by law or a court order

– Where there’s a serious risk to your safety or the safety of others

– For safeguarding concerns involving a child or vulnerable adult

– Where the public interest in disclosure outweighs your right to confidentiality (for example, in the case of a serious communicable disease)

Wherever possible and lawful to do so, we would discuss this with you first.

Clinical photographs taken as part of your care are kept confidential and are not used for any other purpose unless you separately and specifically consent to their use in marketing. See our Privacy Policy for more detail on how we handle before-and-after photography.

Your right to confidentiality continues after your treatment with us ends, and after your death, in line with professional guidance.

If you have any concern about how your information has been handled, please contact us using the details in our Privacy Policy, or see our Complaints Policy for how to raise this formally.

This policy should be read alongside our Privacy Policy, which sets out the full legal basis for our processing of your personal data, and our Complaints Policy.