Practice Charter

PRACTICE CHARTER – by joining our practice you are agreeing to the charter.

Our aim is to …..

  • Give you our very best possible care at all
  • Involve you as a partner in your care and to inform you about all aspects of your management and not to follow a course of management without your consent.
  • Treat you with courtesy, respect and equality irrespective of the nature of your health problems, disability, age, gender sexual orientation or ethnicity.
  • Identify ourselves to you clearly and make it clear how to contact us if
  • Have an appointment system that offers same day and advance appointments
  • Make available a Duty Doctor to deal with all emergencies, queries and This is for urgent medical problems that need to be dealt with the same day.  The Duty Doctor will call you (Triage Call), make an assessment over the phone and either provide you with advice, a prescription, or arrange to see you the same day at the surgery if clinically appropriate, or you may be given an appointment at a later date if not urgent.
  • Provide access for patients to online services
  • Try to run to time for appointments but if we are delayed for any reason our staff will inform you if your wait is likely to exceed 30 minutes.
  • Make home visits if appropriate for those patients who are too ill or infirm to leave the house, note we are more equipped to examine and treat you at the surgery.
  • Try to book you with a Doctor of your choice, this may not always be We ensure that appointments can be booked four weeks in advanced. It is not possible to specify a preferred GP for urgent on the day telephone Triage appointments.
  • Share patient information with practice staff and allied healthcare professionals only when necessary. All these staff have signed up to and strictly adhere to Caldicott principles and the Data Protection Act.

We ask that you ….

  • Treat EVERYONE (clinical team, non clinical team and other patients) with due courtesy and
  • Follow our advice and ask if any aspect of your care is unclear to
  • Make every effort to attend surgery rather than ask for home Home visiting is a very inefficient use of Doctor and Nurse time and we are able to treat you and examine you more holistically in the practice with access to all our equipment.
  • Only use the emergency out of hours service if your problem is genuinely urgent and cannot wait until we are 111 can advise. Dealing with non-urgent problems and trivia delays the Emergency Doctors and may cause unnecessary suffering for more serious cases. It could also cost lives.  Please remember –  A&E is for life threatening conditions.
  • Are punctual for appointments and cancel them in advance if they are no longer needed or you are unable to attend. Missing booked appointments wastes clinical time that could be used by someone else who may be in desperate need to see a clinician.
  • Are patient if we are delayed and running behind during surgery. Sometimes patients may present with more complicated problems and it may take longer than normal to deal Remember, you too may have a complicated problem one day, which requires more time to sort out.
  • Advise if you require an appointment that may take longer than 10 minutes you have more than one problem to raise, please inform the receptionist at the time you book the appointment.
  • Keep to the principle of one appointment for one patient. If several individuals need to see the doctor/nurse, please advise this at the time of booking the
  • Accept if you are more than 10 minutes late for an appointment for either Doctor or Nurse, we cannot guarantee that you will be seen and you may therefore be asked to re-book the appointment or wait until the end of clinic.
  • Can request a general “health check” with a nurse if you are over 16 and have not seen a doctor in the last 3 years, or are over 75 and have not seen a doctor in the past year.

Date published: 3 March 2017
Date last updated: 1 August 2023