Practice Policies and Service Information

All organisations that provide NHS or adult social care must follow the Accessible Information Standard by law. The Accessible Information Standard aims to make sure that disabled people have access to information that they can understand and any communication support that they might need.

If you or your carer(s) have any communication or information needs relating to a disability, impairment or sensory loss. we will try to respond to those needs.

We want to get better at communicating with our patients. We want to make sure you can read and understand the information that we send you. If you find it hard to read our letters or if you need someone to support you at appointments, please let us know. We want to know if you need information in braille, large print or easy read. We want to know if you need a British Sign Language interpreter or advocate. We want to know if we can support you to lipread or use a hearing aid or communication tool. Please tell the receptionist when you arrive for your next appointment, or telephone us on our surgery number.

As part of the Accessible Information Standard, we will do five things:

1. Ask you if you have any information or communication needs, and find out how to meet them.

2. Record these needs in a set way.

3. Highlight these needs in your file and clearly explain how they should be met.

4. Share information about your needs with other NHS and social care providers if we have consent to do so.

5. Make sure that you get information in an accessible way and can access any communication support if you need it.

For more information see NHS England Accessible Information Standard.

We will always respect your privacy, dignity and your religious and cultural beliefs particularly when intimate examinations are advisable. These will only be carried out with your express agreement and you will be offered a chaperone to attend the examination if you so wish.

You may also request a chaperone when making the appointment or on arrival at the surgery (please let the receptionist know) or at any time during the consultation.

You can be assured that anything you discuss with any member of the surgery staff, whether doctor, nurse or receptionist, will remain confidential. Even if you are under 16 years of age, nothing will be said to anyone, including parents, other family members, care workers or teachers, without your permission. The only reason why we might want to consider passing on confidential information without your permission would be to protect either you or someone else from serious harm. In this situation, we would always try to discuss this with you first.

If you have any worries or queries about confidentiality, please ask a member of staff.

If you would like to discuss matters of a confidential nature, either with our receptionists or a member of the dispensary team, we have a side room available in reception for this purpose.

Also see Data Protection, Privacy and Confidentiality.

We make every effort to make the surgery accessible for disabled patients. There is access through the main door and we have a wheelchair available for use in surgery.

Hearing Difficulties

If you are experiencing hearing difficulties when being called in to see the doctor or nurse, please do let us know in order for us to set up an alert on your medical records and personally collect you from the waiting room. Alternatively, we do have the facility of a portable induction loop. If you would like to use this, please ask at reception for assistance.

As an organisation we try to offer our patients the best possible service by working to a set of values and principles agreed by the staff and patients, as set out below:

Our mission statement

“Each and every patient matters”

Our core values and principles which guide us are:

• Patient centred: Each patient’s individual needs and experience are our first consideration and at the heart of everything we do.
• Quality: To provide the highest possible standards of care and treatment to patients with diversity, equity and equality of access.
• Premises: To provide our patients with a clean, modern and safe environment when they visit us.
• Ethical: To work within an ethical framework at all times through a policy of openness and transparency.
• Innovation: To continually innovate to bring about change for the wellbeing of our patients. These will be met as far as possible as financial resource shall allow.
• Teamwork: To work together and support each other for the benefit of our patients.
• Staff: To invest in the development of staff to provide a highly skilled workforce. Our staff is expected to display compassion, courtesy, professionalism and integrity in all their dealings with patients, their families and with each other.

“Providing patients with high-quality medical care”

You have a right to expect a high standard of care from our practice and we will try at all times to provide the very best care possible. In order to assist us in this, we require that you take full responsibility for ensuring that you do not abuse the service.

Very occasionally a practice or patient relationship breaks down completely and in this situation a patient may choose to register with an alternative practice. The practice also has the right to remove that patient from their list. This would generally only follow a warning that had failed to remedy the situation and we would normally give the patient a specific reason (in writing) for the removal.

Following activity on Social Media where patients of Bradshaw Medical Centre have posted derogatory comments about the practice and some of our staff: we now have a Social Media Zero Tolerance Policy in place.

If any such posts are brought to our attention they could be viewed as a potential breakdown in the doctor patient professional relationship and, may result in the individual being removed from our list.

We may contact the patients involved and invite them to have a discussion with the Practice Manager or one of the GP parents to explore any issues they may have.

We welcome all feedback as it gives us the opportunity to review the services that we provide and, where necessary or appropriate, make changes or improvements.

We would ask that rather than posting derogatory or hurtful comments about the practice or any of our staff on social media, please speak to us about this or put your comments to us in writing giving us the opportunity to respond.

Posting derogatory or offensive comments online can cause unwarranted distress to our practice members and staff. They may also cause other patients to delay or dissuade them from presenting to the surgery to receive medical treatment.

PLEASE CONSIDER THE IMPACT OF YOUR ONLINE ACTIVITY BEFORE YOU POST A COMMENT.

GPs in Training

Our practice is approved to train fully qualified doctors who wish to specialise in general practice. Our GP registrar will have had 2 to 4 years of experience as a qualified hospital doctor working in various specialities. They consult patients on their own, under the mentorship of our trainers. Occasionally we ask permission to video a consultation. You will always be asked in advance and are given the option not to take part, and this will not affect your care in any way. No recording will be taken without your consent and the camera will be switched off on request. These videos are used only for educational purposes with the doctor doing the consultation and are destroyed after use.

The NHS operates a Zero Tolerance Policy with regard to violence and abuse, the practice having the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard staff, patients and other persons attending the surgery.

Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person's safety. In the event of an occurrence of this nature, we are obliged to notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient medical record the reason for the removal. The Clinical Commissioning Group is then responsible for providing further medical care for such patients.