Table 4 Healthcare professionals’ attitude towards themselves and peers

Moral obligations inherent to political engagement

[A] [translation] “They [mandatory hospital CRGs] are mandatory statistics, therefore it seems relatively obvious as moral obligations to maintain them.”

[A] “Our role is to propose to the parliament a law, that is useful, the most useful possible [for CRG]. That’s I think our most noble and our most important duty.”

Necessity to better inform patients

[Sub-group M”]: “I think the patients are not well informed and I think maybe there are some fields, which could be destroyed if there would not be an objective information. You know, at the moment, there are a lot of news for example showing the data or pictures from persons are provided on the internet because they have been taken out of clouds or whatever. And I think this increases the fear, and I think it will be very important to inform patients on what data are stored, why they are stored and that they cannot be identified for example.”

Norms can be burdensome

[Sub-group M’]: “We don’t need new regulation because as a doctor, as a lawyer, you have your professional obligations to keep your clients or patients’ data secret. So, if you don’t do that, you can be brought to court nowadays, so I don’t see what it changes if the patients must sign 5 such forms entering a hospital, on biobank, on whatever registry... it is counterproductive. You want to have an informed and empowered patient but it’s completely the other effect, you induce with paperwork. Nobody can understand the legislation.”

Issue of transparency and communication

[Sub-group M”] “I am absolutely convinced that physicians do not want to have this level of transparency, because everyone in this country who is allowed by the patient to load, enter to his file, can see what the other physician did, and “untransparency” is a very important thing in the health care system.”