Patients' rights and responsibilities

Patients rights and responsibilities overview

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.

Named GP

Confirmation

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.

The practice's responsibilities

What does it mean to have a named accountable GP?

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.

What does this mean for you?

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.

The responsibilities of your named GP will be to:

  • Take the lead responsibility for ensuring that all appropriate services required by you from the GP practice are provided.
  • Where required, use their professional judgement, to work with relevant health and social care professionals to deliver a care package that meets your needs.
  • Ensure your physical and psychological needs are recognised and responded to by the relevant clinicians in the practice.
  • Ensure you have access to a health check if requested.

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.  

Attending your appointments

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.

Cancelling appointments with the NHS App

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.

NHS zero tolerance policy

We expect to run the surgery so staff and patients are courteous and respectful to each other.

Violent or abusive behaviour undermines the mutually supportive relationship between a patient and everyone at the surgery. It will not be tolerated.

We reserve the right to issue warnings to patients who commit these types of behaviour. This can include us taking steps to have the patient removed from our list, without notice if that is appropriate to protect our staff.

Types of behaviour that are not acceptable at the surgery include:-

  • Foul or abusive language including any language that likely to cause distress to a member of staff or another patient.
  • Physical violence towards any member of or another patient.
  • Racial abuse or any form of harassment
  • Damage to property
  • Obtaining drugs and/or medical services fraudulently
We ask you to treat all of our staff courteously at all times. They have a right to work without fear of violence or abuse.
Digital exclusion

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.

Our Approach to Digital Engagement

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.