Your and Your General Practice

What the guide includes:

The page explains:

What you can expect from your GP practice.

Your GP practice is here to support your health and wellbeing. The guide explains the standards you should receive when accessing services, such as being treated with dignity and respect, being offered safe and effective care, and being listened to.

What your GP practice expects from you.

To help us provide care efficiently and fairly for everyone, the guide outlines what practices ask of patients. This includes things like attending appointments on time, treating staff respectfully, and cancelling appointments you no longer need so they can be offered to someone else.

Working together

The relationship between you and your GP practice works best when there is clear communication and mutual understanding. The guide highlights how both patients and practices can work in partnership to improve health outcomes and make sure care is accessible for all.

Feedback and concerns

The NHS encourages feedback so that services can continue to improve. The guide explains how you can share your experiences, give suggestions, or raise concerns if you feel something has not gone as it should.

Why this matters

“You and Your General Practice” has been designed to:

  • Give patients clear information about how GP practices work.
  • Make it easier to know what to expect when you use GP services.
  • Help both patients and staff have a positive, respectful experience.
  • Support good communication and reduce misunderstandings.

Read the full guide

You can view the NHS England page in full here:

You and Your General Practice – NHS England

We encourage all our patients to take a few minutes to read this page. It provides useful insight into how general practice works and how we can all play a part in keeping services effective, fair, and supportive for our whole community.

Zero Tolerance to Violence Policy

All practices, in line with government guidelines, have a ‘Zero Tolerance to Violence’ policy. This means that any violent or abusive behaviour or perceived threatening behaviour, whether verbal or otherwise to staff or members of the public on practice premises will not be tolerated. We can refuse to provide a service, report the incident to the Police and request that the patient and their family be removed from their Practice list.

#ZeroTolerance

NHS staff should be able to come to work without fear of violence, abuse or harassment from other staff or the general public

  • We are the NHS
  • We Are Proud To Be Diverse.
  • We Say No To Racism And Discrimination.
  • We Do Not, And Must Never, Accept Racism In Any Part Of Our NHS. We Have A Zero Tolerance To Discrimination And Racism

Together Against Abuse of Primary Care Staff

Watch this YouTube Video about Abuse of Primary Care Staff.

Statement of Purpose

Our aim is to provide holistic care to all of our patients from cradle to grave, including those patients who have multiple co-morbidities, people with special needs and vulnerable groups.

All patients will be treated in an open and transparent way with dignity and respect, whilst protecting their confidentiality.

Every patient will be given excellent care without discrimination.

Patients will be offered appointments in a variety of settings and with a variety of Health Professionals.

The practice will work alongside other NHS agencies.

Patient Preference of Practitioner

All registered patients have the right to express a preference to receive services from a particular Doctor, either generally or in relation to any particular condition; such preferences will be recorded by the Practice.

The Practice will endeavor to comply with any reasonable preference, but need not do so if the preferred performer has reasonable grounds for refusing to provide services to the patient or if the performer does not routinely perform the services in question within the Practice.

NHS Constitution / Patient Charter

The doctors and staff are committed to providing a high quality medical service to our patients, and to treat all patients and visitors with respect and courtesy. We will endeavour to provide you with or direct you to such diagnostic, therapeutic and preventative services as will ensure the best outcome for your problems within the constraints of what is possible, reasonable and practicable.

We ask that patients and their families treat us with respect and courtesy. The health centre has a policy of removing any patient from our list who is verbally or physically abusive towards staff or other patients.

The NHS Constitution establishes the principles and values of the NHS in England. It sets out rights to which patients, public and staff are entitled, and pledges which the NHS is committed to achieve, together with responsibilities, which the public, patients and staff owe to one another to ensure that the NHS operates fairly and effectively. To view the up to date full document, please click here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitution-for-england/the-nhs-constitution-for-england

Essential Services

The Practice will provide within core hours, primary medical services required for the management of its registered patients and temporary residents, who are, or believe themselves to be, ill with conditions from which recovery is generally expected, terminally ill or suffering from chronic disease; delivered in the manner determined by the practice in discussion with the patient.

The Practice will also provide primary medical services required within core hours for the immediate necessary treatment of any person requesting treatment owing to an accident or emergency at any place within its practice area.

The Practice will include the provision of appropriate ongoing treatment and care to all registered patients and temporary residents, taking account of their specific needs including the provision of advice in connection with patients health, including relevant health promotion and the referral of other NHS services.

Complaints

We hope that you will be happy with the services that you receive from the practice. However, there may be an occasion whereby you wish to make a complaint and in these circumstances you should download and complete our practice complaints procedure and form.

When completed, please post to the surgery and mark for the attention of our Practice Manager.

Transferring Your Electronic Health Record

Your GP practice holds copies of your patient health record electronically and in paper format. Both contain the healthcare information about you that your GP needs including your medical history, medications, allergies, immunisations and vaccinations.

If you have previously registered with a different GP in England, upon registering at this practice your electronic health record will, where possible, be transferred automatically from your previous practice through the use of an NHS system called GP2GP.

Transferring Your Electronic Health Record leaflet.