A patient enters your consulting room with their smartphone poised, ready to hit “record” on their appointment. As a clinician, do you welcome their request to capture the interaction, or try to put the brakes on?

There’s a decent chance the patient has just been told another set of ears is already listening in. The rise of AI scribes has made us all more comfortable with the idea of technology sitting in the background, sucking up the key details to speed up clinical notes later. What’s the harm in the patient having their own audio or video recording to take home with them?

Navigating the request to record a consultation might feel awkward, but there’s a chance you don’t even get to that point. With a covert swipe of a phone screen or a tap of a pair of AI glasses, a patient might be getting their appointment on tape without you ever knowing.

The ease of recording, coupled with the rise of “patient influencers” on social media, has prompted ripples of anxiety across healthcare systems over the past year. In 2025, the UK’s Society of Radiographers sounded a warning over the increasing number of patients filming their own procedures to post on platforms like TikTok, arguing this practice could put staff and other patients at risk [link here].

But while it’s important to know your rights, medico legal experts say Australian specialists have no need to panic at the prospect of consultations being recorded.

“I think recordings actually are highly beneficial in a range of ways, and from a medico-legal risk standpoint, they are likely to be helpful rather than a problem. It provides a secure record of who said what to whom,” Melbourne Law School Associate Professor Megan Prictor told the limbic. 

The request

If a patient asks to record their visit via video or audio, Australian doctors have the right to say no – but should tread carefully when doing so, experts said.

“The bottom line is, doctors don’t have to give consent, and the patient should respect their decision. But I think if patients are asking to record and the doctor is uncomfortable, it would be a really good idea for the doctor to think about what’s behind the patient’s request,” said Associated Professor Prictor, who has published extensively on recording of consultations in Australia. 

“For example, are they feeling uncertain about their condition or treatment plan? Is there something else you can offer them?”

Avant Mutual senior legal advisor Ruanne Brell also said it was important to understand a patient’s reasoning before refusing. 

“Doctors can decline the request, however, they should be explaining why it’s not appropriate and offering alternatives. This discussion should also be documented in the patient’s records.” 

For the most part, recordings are made for pragmatic purposes, expert in medical ethics at Monash University Professor Paul Komesaroff said.

“They can help patients remember and understand what occurred, they can allow them to share the outcomes of the consultation with family members and others, they can improve the sense of partnership between doctor and patient, and they can reduce vulnerability, especially where a patient faces a particular obstacle, such as limited understanding of the language or a physical disability,” he said. 

“In all these cases, the use of a recording can be fruitful and beneficial for both parties.” 

Associate Professor Prictor agreed.

“Patients are not usually trying to catch doctors out by recording, they’re wanting to do it for a legitimate reason.” 

Covert recordings and relationship breakdowns 

What if patients skip the part where they ask permission?

A survey of Australian patients by Associate Professor Prictor and colleagues revealed 22% of patients had recorded an appointment in secret or knew someone who had.

When asked for reasons for doing so, many reported feeling worried about their doctor’s reaction to being asked to record, or feared being told no.

Existing concerns or frustrations with the quality of care were also motivators for recording without permission, the study found [link here].

“The evidence does show that a small number of such recordings are made covertly,” Professor Komesaroff said. But he said when this happened, it was likely there were tensions in the patient relationship at play before a recording device entered the picture.

Professor Paul Komesaroff.

“It may be presumed that in these cases there may be a lack of trust in the doctor, or even outright hostility. In these cases, it is likely that the problems predated the conversation being recorded and that there is a risk that the recording will not be helpful or beneficial for the patient.”

An analysis by Associate Professor Prictor of 46 court proceedings involving recordings of Australian healthcare consultations, published in 2025, sheds light on how this issue plays out in the courts [link here].

The study showed recordings often landed in the courts where there was already “high conflict between parties, especially when patients have little trust in the healthcare professional that their own interests will be protected”.

It also found recordings that had been agreed to by both doctor and patient rarely ended up in the legal forums and posed a very low risk of adverse medico legal consequences.

“Healthcare professionals should find reassurance here that, absent explicit wrongdoing on their part, recordings of consultations rarely impact their interests in a negative way,” the research found.

Setting expectations

In cases where both parties consent to being recorded, clinicians can still lay out ground rules about how the files get used.

Most hospital and healthcare systems have their own policies on audio and video recordings, which you can alert patients to ahead of time.

Data suggests the vast majority of Australian patients oppose sharing consults on social media [link here], but it’s still possible to emphasise any audio or video should not be shared.

Associate Professor Prictor said doctors could set boundaries around who gets to watch or listen to the recording and emphasise it was for personal use only.

“I think it’s reasonable to put parameters [and set] expectations – for example, saying ‘I’m happy for you to record and play this for a spouse or family member, but I don’t want you to share it more broadly without my consent.’” 

Specialists should also talk with their patients about why they want to record in the first place, Professor Komesaroff said, and should be looking for ways to “assist the patient to improve understanding, confidence and security”. 

When specialists feel reluctance to sign off on a recording, it was worth interrogating why.

“An inappropriate reason for opposing the recording of a consultation would be a physician’s sense that their authority was being questioned or, worse still, their power undermined,” he said. 

“Neither of these latter feelings is legitimate or justified and may signal a need for the doctor to reflect on their own role and whether their communicative skills can be improved.”