The relationship between a GP surgery and their patients is based on trust, mutual respect, and open communication.
This partnership between GP surgeries and their patients is crucial for ensuring high-quality medical care and promoting overall health and well-being.
Below are listed some of the key elements that help to support and sustain the important relationship.
In accordance with our contract with NHS England, every patient is allocated a named GP.
All patients including children at The Marshside Surgery have been allocated a named, accountable GP this is Dr Robert Caudwell.
Your named GP will have overall responsibility for the coordination of all appropriate services, care and support that our surgery provides you. It does not prevent you from seeing any GP or ANP in the practice as you currently do.
You are unlikely to see any notable change in the way care is delivered to you by our practice. We have operated a list-based service for many years in which each patient was allocated to a specific doctor. The recent directive merely formalises this arrangement and clarifies what a named GP does.
These responsibilities will be carried out within the opening hours of the surgery and do not change the way you or other patients currently access care outside of these hours.
You should continue to book appointments with the practice in the same way. If you require an appointment urgently you should book in with the available healthcare practitioner at the surgery.
Please book appointments with our nursing team in the usual way.
Please note that despite our GPs working with other health and social care professionals to deliver your care needs, they do not take on the responsibility for the care others deliver to you. If you have concerns about any care provided by a health and social care professional outside of the practice, this should be raised directly with them or with the commissioning organisation.
It is really important that you attend your scheduled appointments at the surgery.
If it is no longer convenient or you decide you no longer need it then please let us know as early as you possibly can. Demand for appointments is very high and, with enough notice, we can usually reallocate your appointment to another patient.
You can cancel any appointment via the NHS app even it was not booked online in the first place.
When a patient misses an appointment it is known as a 'Did Not Attend' (DNA).
If a patient persistently misses appointments with letting us know in advance in can harm the relationship of mutual trust with the practice. We may contact you by phone or letter to discuss this and what we can do together to improve things in the future.
As an employer, the practice has a duty of care for the health, safety and wellbeing of its staff. The practice also has a legal responsibility to provide a safe and secure working environment for staff. Staff mental health is as important as their physical health.
All patients and staff are expected to behave in an acceptable, respectful manner.
The practice follows the NHS guidance concerning Zero Tolerance.
Any incident in which an employee is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work is unacceptable and not tolerated.
This includes the serious or persistent use of verbal abuse, aggressive tone and/or language and swearing/foul language.
Staff should not be left upset and distressed following an interaction with a patient.
All instances of actual physical abuse or threatening behaviour on any doctor or member of staff, by a patient or their relatives will be reported to the police as an assault.
We expect all patients to be responsible and avoid attending the surgery under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs. Any alteration of prescriptions is illegal and will not be tolerated.
The General Medical Council states In Good Medical Practice that: “In rare circumstances, the trust between you (the Practice) and a patient may break down, and you may find it necessary to end the professional relationship. For example, this may occur if a patient has been violent to you or a colleague, has stolen from the premises, or has persistently acted inconsiderately or unreasonably.”
This includes unnecessarily persistent or unrealistic service demands that cause disruption. Examples of this include, but are not limited to :
The practice has a finite number of available appointments and you may be directed to a clinician who is not a GP, or your preferred GP, but who is appropriately qualified to manage the presenting care need. We provide a named GP service but we cannot always accommodate requests to speak to the same GP due to high patient demand for appointments.
If you are seriously unhappy with the quality of service you have the right to register with another practice without notifying us. Similarly, on the very rare occasions when a patient breaches this policy, we have the right to remove the patient from our Practice list.
If you have access to the internet and you are comfortable using digital services then the NHS App is the easiest way to interact with the surgery.
We encourage everyone who is able to use digital services to try them out and use them whenever possible.
You can use the app to carry out many of the basic interactions liking ordering medication or cancelling an appointment.
Doing these tasks via the NHS App can save you time and also reduces the amount of adminstration for the practice.
However we will make sure that technology is not a barrier that prevents patients accessing our services. We will always try make it clear how patients can access services without using digital apps.
Equally we will work to make sure the digital apps and our website meets the required standards for accessibility.
We encourage all our patients to use the NHS app to interact with the surgery but will make sure thatthose who are unable to use digital apps are not prevented from accessing services.