We treat our patients with courtesy and respect and ask for the same in return. We ask that you treat your GP and all other Practice Staff courteously, without violence, abuse or harassment. 

GPs and their staff have the right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.  To successfully provide these services a mutual respect between all staff and patients has to be in place.  All our staff aim to be polite, helpful and sensitive to all patients' individual needs and circumstances. They would respectfully remind patients that very often staff could be confronted with a multitude of varying and sometimes difficult tasks and situations, all at the same time.  The staff understand that ill patients do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint. 

However, aggressive behaviour, be it violent or abusive will not be tolerated and may result in you being removed from the Practice list and in extreme cases, the Police being contacted. 

In order for the practice to maintain good relations with their patients the practice would like to ask all it's patients to read and take note of the occasional types of behaviour that would be found unacceptable:

• Using bad language or swearing at practice staff
• Any physical violence towards any member of the Primary Health Care Team or other patients, such as pushing or shoving.
• Verbal abuse towards staff in any form including verbally insulting the staff.
• Racial abuse and sexual harassment will not be tolerated within this practice.
• Persistent or unrealistic demands that cause stress to staff will not be accepted. Requests will be met wherever possible and explanations given when they cannot. 
• Causing damage/stealing from the Practice's premises, staff or patients
• Obtaining drugs and/or medical service fraudulently

We ask you to treat our GPs and their staff courteously at all times. 

Instances of any of the above will be reported to the Practice manager, recorded in our incident book and a warning letter will be sent to the patient.  The patient may contact the Practice Manager to discuss this warning letter if they wish to do so.  When the incident book shows a second recorded offence, the patient will be sent a Final Warning Letter informing them of their breach of the Zero Tolerance Policy and their removal from the Practice List.  

Removal from the practice list

A good patient-doctor relationship, based on mutual respect and trust, is the cornerstone of good patient care.  The removal of patients from our list is an exceptional and rare event and is a last resort in an impaired patient-doctor relationship.  When trust has irretrievably broken down, it is in the patients' interest, just as much as that of the practice, that they should find a new practice.  An exception to this is on immediate removal on the grounds of violence e.g. when the Police are involved. 

Removing other members of the household

In rare cases, however because of the possible need to visit patients at home it may be necessary to terminate responsibility for other members of the family or the entire household.  The prospect of visiting patients where a relative who is no longer a patient of the practice by virtue of their unacceptable behaviour resides, or being regularly confronted by the removed patient, may make it too difficult for the practice to continue to look after the whole family.  This is particularly likely where the patient has been removed because of violence or threatening behaviour and keeping the other family members could put doctors or their staff at risk.