Patient Confidentiality

We do all we can to ensure that everything we know about you remains confidential. Confidentiality is one of the central principles of medicine and is key to maintaining trust between patients and health professionals.

This also applies to young people (including those under 16) who are entitled to equal confidentiality as all other patients.

Please do not be offended if you are refused information regarding another patient, even if you are a family member, close friend or neighbour as all information about our patients is confidential, from the most sensitive diagnosis to the fact of being registered at the practice or even having visited the surgery.

All health professionals must follow their professional codes of practice and the law. This means that they must make every effort to protect confidentiality. It also means that no identifiable information about a patient is passed to anyone or any agency without the express permission of that patient, except when this is essential for providing care or necessary to protect somebody’s health, safety or well-being.

All members of staff, including reception and administration staff, have access to patient information during the course of their duties but are bound by strict confidentiality codes of conduct, this includes what information they can access and when. They all receive training to ensure that confidentiality is maintained throughout the surgery at all times.

New regulations called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on 25th May 2018, further information on this and our Fair Processing Notice is available under a separate tab.

Consent

If you wish to share your information with a member of your family, friend or neighbour please complete the Consent Form and hand it in to reception.

Telephone Calls

Please note all telephone calls into and out of the Practice are recorded for training and quality purposes.