The practice is committed to providing a safe and comfortable environment where patients and staff are confident that best practice is being followed.

Patients are entitled to ask for a chaperone for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel they prefer to have a chaperone.

The practice will endeavour to provide a formally trained chaperone upon request, but patients would help us by requesting a chaperone when booking an appointment where a chaperone is required.  This may mean rescheduling appointments in order to meet this need.

A doctor, nurse or other health care professional may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations.

We make every effort to give the best service possible to everyone who attends our practice.

However, we are aware that things can go wrong resulting in a patient feeling that they have a genuine cause for complaint. If this is so, we would wish for the matter to be settled as quickly, and as amicably, as possible.

To pursue a complaint please contact reception supervisor who will deal with your concerns appropriately.

Arbroath Medical Centre Complaints Procedure

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you, for example from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services, for example from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others, for example in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services, for example in diabetic care.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Information about the General Practioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the Practice Manager.

The Medical Centre processes personal identifiable information that relates to patients and is therefore required by law to comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which protect your privacy and ensure that your personal information is processed fairly and lawfully.

Patient Data Protection Notice

The Medical Centre Practice Protocol for Removal of Patients

Due to incidents that have occurred within The Medical Centre we have found it necessary to implement a protocol to highlight behaviour that will not be tolerated.

Patient’s who breach any of the following will be promptly removed from our practice list.

1. Theft from practice premises or personnel
2. Violent, threatening, abusive behaviour or sexual advances towards staff or other patients whilst in practice premises.
3. Fraudulently obtaining drugs.
4. Deliberately lying to the doctor or other member of the healthcare team in order to obtain a service or benefit by deception.
5. A patient who has moved out of the practice boundary but has failed to register with a practice in their new area.
6. Persistent non attendance.

NHS Scotland is improving the way it uses information from your GP patient record.

The improved service is called Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE) and has been developed to help GPs, the NHS in Scotland and researchers plan for Scotland’s health and care needs.

Scottish Primary Care Information Resource leaflet.

The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons.

Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety. In this situation we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.