Practice Charter

Together We Can Achieve The Best - How You Can Help Us

• Be courteous to staff at all times.
• Attend appointments on time or give notice that you wish to cancel.
• Make every effort to attend the surgery with your problem. This ensures the best use of medical and nursing time – home visits take time and should be requested only if you are physically incapable of coming to the surgery.
• Make sure your repeat prescription is ordered in good time.
• Out of hours calls, e.g. evening, night and weekends should only be requested for true medical emergencies.

Confidentiality / Access To Patient Information

Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice health care team and with other health care professionals to whom you are referred for care.

Patient data may also be required for the broader purpose of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and, if possible, will be anonymised before disclosure. Confidential and identifiable information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent unless:

• It is a matter of life and death or serious harm to you or to another individual.
• It is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so.
• There is a legal obligation to do so.

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality.

If you are concerned about any of the ways in which your confidential data is used, further information is available from the practice manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.

Complaints

We operate a patients' complaints procedure as part of the NHS regulations and our system meets the national criteria. Copies of our practice complaints procedure and complaint forms are available at reception. You can make an appointment with the practice manager to discuss any issues you have or you can put your complaint in writing to the practice manager or to one of the partners.

Zero Tolerance

We operate a zero tolerance policy for abuse and aggressive behaviour in the surgery. Any patient reported as having been abusive or displaying aggressive behaviour to any staff member will be removed from the surgery list.