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Bridge Medical Centre
Patient Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct for Engagement with Primary Medical Services

At Bridge Medical Centre, we are committed to providing a safe and respectful environment for both patients and staff. To uphold these standards, we require all individuals accessing our services to adhere to the following Code of Conduct:
1. Respect and Dignity: All patients are expected to treat the GPs, staff, and other patients with respect. This includes refraining from rude, disrespectful, or bullying behaviour towards staff members. In return, patients can expect the same level of respect and dignity from our staff.

2. Prohibited Behaviour: The following actions are considered unacceptable and breach our Code of Conduct:
– Excessive noise that is disruptive to others.
– Use of threatening, intimidating, abusive, or obscene language.
– Offensive remarks, including those of a racial, sexual, or derogatory nature.
– Physical or verbal aggression, including hostile or antagonistic comments.
– Damage to property, theft, or any dishonest behaviour.
– Spitting or engaging in threatening gestures/actions.
– Inappropriate behaviour involving alcohol or substance misuse.
– Frequently calling the service and using the emergency phone line for non-urgent medical problems.
– Utilising services in a manner that is excessively frequent or unjust, resulting in inequitable access for other patients.
– Not adhering to the advice given by the clinician.
– Submitting an unreasonable number of complaints, which leads to operational disruption.
– Engaging in prolonged, protracted conversations over the phone, monopolising administrators and clinician’s time.
– Unfair and unreasonable comments posted about the surgery or staff members in public forums.

3. Engagement with Staff and Services: Patients are expected to engage cooperatively with practice staff to schedule or cancel appointments, request medical advice, and manage their healthcare, including medication monitoring. Should engagement become unreasonable or excessive, staff reserve the right to terminate the interaction.

4. Consultation Conduct: Patients are required to engage in consultations (both face-to-face and telephone) in a focused and respectful manner. Consultations are generally scheduled for 10 minutes unless extended by the clinician. If a patient’s behaviour during a consultation is deemed unreasonable, the clinician may terminate the interaction

5. Complaints Procedure: If you have any complaints regarding your care at Bridge Medical Centre, please address them to the Practice Manager, who will handle them in accordance with the NHS England Complaints Procedure.

6. Consequences of Breaching the Code of Conduct: Failure to comply with this Code of Conduct may result in a warning or removal from our patient list. Severe breaches, particularly those involving violence or requiring police intervention, will lead to immediate removal from the patient list.

By adhering to this Code of Conduct, patients help us maintain a safe and respectful environment for everyone. We appreciate your cooperation and commitment to these standards.
Please be aware that Bridge Medical Centre has video surveillance on the premises and all calls are recorded for compliance and quality improvement purposes.

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice. The required disclosure is shown below.

The average pay for GPs working in Bridge Medical Centre in the 2023-2024 financial year was £95429 before tax and national insurance.

This is for 3 full time, 2 part time and 1 locum GP who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised, and the required disclosure is shown above. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

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Click here to view our Information Governance Data Protection and Confidentiality Policy

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Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients’ control and can be shared on a ‘need to know’ basis.

There is a new Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). The Summary Care Record is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. Initially, it will contain just your medications and allergies.

Later on as the central NHS computer system develops, (known as the ‘Summary Care Record’ – SCR), other staff who work in the NHS will be able to access it along with information from hospitals, out of hours services, and specialists letters that may be added as well.

Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held on central NHS databases.

As with all new systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems, although even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.

On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice. Connecting for Health (CfH), the government agency responsible for the Summary Care Record have agreed with doctors’ leaders that new patients registering with this practice should be able to decide whether or not their information is uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System.

For existing patients it is different in that it is assumed that you want your record uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System unless you actively opt out.

Your GP Practice is committed to operating in a way that complies fully with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We recognise that the personal data legitimately required in order to carry out our business must be collected, processed, stored and disposed of fairly, lawfully and with due regard to confidentiality. We fully respects your privacy.

If you have any questions about your data or how we deal with it please contact the practice and get in touch with us by clicking on the Contact Us links available on this website.