of prisoner medical examination contradicts the principle of confidentiality the doctor/patient relationship. In its 2013 Report to the Parliament, the Public Defender recommended the Minister of Corrections to cancel the Order of the Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance no. 38 dated 10 March 2011 approving the “Rules of transferring sick prisoners from pretrial detention facilities and places of deprivation of liberty to general hospitals, the Penitentiary Department’s Center for the Treatment of Tuberculosis and Rehabilitation or to the Institution for the Treatment of Remand and Sentenced Prisoners” and to reinforce the principle of confidentiality of medical information in a new normative act governing medical referrals. Order 38 was cancelled and replaced by Order 55, pursuant to which prison doctors no longer have to obtain the consent of not only the Medical Department but the prison directors to a transfer of prisoners to medical facilities. Prison director will receive a mere notification that a prisoner’s transfer to a medical facility has been requested. This new rule ensures protection of confidential information. Sometimes prisoners are unaware of the medical services to be provided to them. In some cases we observed a clear lack of communication between the prisoners and the institution’s healthcare staff. Thus, before his transfer to the Institution no. 14, a prisoner was informed by the healthcare staff that he might have been put on the electronic list but he did not know that the request for his surgery was approved. With the prisoner’s consent, members of the monitoring group talked to the Institution’s chief doctor on this matter who stated that the prisoner had been registered in the electronic database but the chief doctor did not inform him thereabout. It is important for prisoners to be involved in the provision of healthcare services to them as much as possible. Prisoners should also have access to information about health protection in general, including preventative health protection measures. RECOMMENDATION TO THE MINISTER OF CORRECTIONS: •• Ensure professional independence and competence of the penitentiary healthcare personnel by fully incorporating the medical personnel’s professional independence principle and the medical ethics principles in the legal framework regulating the penitentiary system, providing the healthcare personnel with continuous professional training, enhancing various training modules for them, creating a mechanism for evaluating and supervising the sustainability of training results and elaborating clear job description •• Make sure that a prisoner can contact the healthcare staff directly, without having to involve non-medical staff, including by installing calling buttons and obliging the healthcare staff to go round and inspect the cells every day in closed-type institutions •• Take necessary measures to ensure that any medical examination and medical consultation takes place in privacy, respecting the principle of confidentiality, in a doctor’s office, unless the situation is urgent and exceptional 108 NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM OF GEORGIA