Confidentiality & Medical Records

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Chaperones

All patients may have a chaperone present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel one is required. This chaperone may be a family member or friend. On occasions you may prefer a formal chaperone to be present, ie a trained member of staff. If you would like a formal chaperone to be present, where possible, please request this when booking the appointment.

Complaints

We make every effort to give the best service possible to everyone who attends our practice. However, we are aware that things can go wrong resulting in a patient feeling that they have a genuine cause for complaint. If this is so, we would wish for the matter to be settled as quickly and as amicably, as possible.

If you do have a concern, we would encourage you to initially discuss it with the Practice Manager or one of the partners. If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of our in-house investigations we can provide details of other organisations who will be able to help you further. We do operate a complaints procedure – our patient complaints information sheet gives details of the procedure and is available from reception

Violence Policy

The practice supports the Government’s NHS zero tolerance to violence campaign. Doctors and their staff have the right to care for others without the fear of being attacked or abused.

A patient who has committed an act of violence or abuse against the doctor, the staff or any other person present, either on the practice premises or in another place where treatment is given by the practice, will be reported to the police and removed from the practice list with immediate effect.