Accessible information –

The Accessible Information Standard is a requirement that all NHS organisations, including GP practices must follow to make sure that people who have a disability, impairment or sensory loss or their carers are given information in a format they can easily read or understand.

So, we can help and support you we want to know;

• If you need information in a specific format e.g. braille, large print or easy read
• If you need to receive information in a particular way
• if you need someone to support you at appointments e.g. a sign language interpreter or an advocate
• We want to know if you lip read or use a hearing aid or communication tool

Please let us know if you require any type of support so we can record this information and add it to your record.  You can do this by telling our reception team, doctor or nurse the support you need. It is best you do this prior to needing an appointment, so the practice can make the necessary adjustments in advance.

NHS England has more information on the standard which is available in a range of formats including easy read, audio and BSL video with subtitles.  You can see these by clicking the link below:

NHS England » Patients

Healthwatch Sunderland have created a leaflet to explain this

Do you have communication needs? | Healthwatch Sunderland

Reasonable Adjustments

All disabled people have the right to reasonable adjustments. This includes when using healthcare, including GP practices.

We need to make it as easy for disabled people to use health services. This is called making reasonable adjustments.

Reasonable adjustments are changes which mean people with a disability can access the healthcare they need.

Reasonable adjustments are dependent on the person. Everyone has different needs.  Some examples might include:

• making sure there is good access for people who use a wheelchair in the surgery
• providing plain English or easy read appointment letters.
• giving someone a priority appointment if they find it difficult waiting in their GP surgery or hospital.
• offering a longer appointment if someone needs more time with a doctor or nurse to make sure they understand the information they are given.
• having a quiet space available for people waiting for their appointment.
• making sure there is a hearing loop system in consultation rooms
• using a communication chart to support a person with dementia during an appointment.

Please let us know if you require any type adjustment to access your appointments so we can record this information and add it to your record.  You can do this by telling our reception team, doctor or nurse the adjustments you need. It is best you do this prior to needing an appointment, so the practice can make the necessary adjustments in advance.

Accessing someone else’s information

As a parent, family member or carer, you may be able to access services for someone else. We call this having proxy access. We can set this up for you if you are both registered with us.

To requests proxy access:

• collect a proxy access form from reception from 10am to 6pm

Linked profiles in your NHS account

Once proxy access is set up, you can access the other person’s profile in your NHS account, using the NHS App or website.

The NHS website has information about using linked profiles to access services for someone else.

Complaints process/procedures

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 like the matter to be settled as quickly, and as amicably, as possible.

To have your complaint investigated, you need to complain within 12 months of the event happening, or as soon as you first become aware of the issue you want to complain about.

The time limit can be extended in special circumstances.

How to make a compliment or complaint

Whether you are happy or unhappy with the care and treatment that you have received, please get in touch and let us know your views.

Receiving compliments and complaints is important to ensuring good quality local healthcare in our Practice – helping us to find out more about what we’re getting right and what we can improve.

We hope this will help you to make your feelings and experiences known to the appropriate people. Should you have a complaint we hope this page will give you more information about what to do, who to contact and what happens next.

How do I raise a concern / informal complaint?

You can speak to any member of staff initially with your complaint. This gives you the opportunity to resolve any concern you may have without it going through a formal process.

Most complaints are best resolved within the practice and these should be made via the Management team.

If you’re considering making a complaint but need help

If you require support to make a complaint Voice Ability can offer both offer both information and support.  They have advocates to support people to make a complaint about the treatment or care that they or a friend or family member have received from an NHS service. This support is available at every stage of the complaints process.

VoiceAbility | Sunderland

Formal Complaint

What we will do

We will contact you about your complaint within three working days and offer to discuss with you the best way to investigate it, including the time scales for a reply. We will aim to offer you an explanation within that time frame. Or a meeting with the people involved.

• Find out what happened and what went wrong
• Invite you to discuss the problem with those involved, if you would like this
• Apologise where this is appropriate
• Identify what we can do to make sure that the problem does not happen again.

If you feel you do not want to contact the surgery directly, then you can contact the NHS integrated care board complaints team on:

Website address: NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB contact us

Email: necsu.pccomplaints@nhs.net

Telephone: 0191 512 8484

In General

If you have a complaint to make, you can either contact the Practice Manager or ask the Receptionist for a copy of our Complaints Procedure. We will endeavour to:

1. acknowledge any letter or Complaints Form within 3 working days of receiving it.
2. deal with the matter as promptly as possible – usually within 20 working days – dependent on the nature of the complaint.

Who can complain

• Complainants may be current or former patients, or their nominated or elected representatives (who have been given consent to act on the patients behalf).
• Patients over the age of 16 whose mental capacity is unimpaired should normally complain themselves or authorise someone to bring a complaint on their behalf.
• Children under the age of 16 can also make their own complaint, if they’re able to do so.

If a patient lacks capacity to make decisions, their representative must be able to demonstrate sufficient interest in the patient’s welfare and be an appropriate person to act on their behalf. This could be a partner, relative or someone appointed under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 with lasting power of attorney.

Appropriate person

In certain circumstances, we need to check that a representative is the appropriate person to make a complaint.

• For example, if the complaint involves a child, we must satisfy ourselves that there are reasonable grounds for the representative to complain, rather than the child concerned.
• If the patient is a child or a patient who lacks capacity, we must also be satisfied that the representative is acting in the patient’s best interests.

If we are not satisfied that the representative is an appropriate person we will not consider the complaint, and will give the representative the reasons for our decision in writing.

Procedure

We have a two stage complaints procedure. We will always try to deal with your complaint quickly however if it is clear that the matter will need a detailed investigation, we will notify you and then keep you updated on our progress.

Stage one – Early, local resolution

• We will try to resolve your complaint within five working days if possible.
• If you are dissatisfied with our response, you can ask us to escalate your complaint to Stage Two.

Stage Two – Investigation

• We will look at your complaint at this stage if you are dissatisfied with our response at Stage One.
• We also escalate some complaints straight to this stage, if it is clear that they are complex or need detailed investigation.
• We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and we will give you our decision as soon as possible. This will be no more that 20 working days unless there is clearly a good reason for needing more time to respond.

Complain to the Ombudsman

If, after receiving our final decision, you remain dissatisfied you may take your complaint to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman is independent of the NHS and free to use. It can help resolve your complaint, and tell the NHS how to put things right if it has got them wrong.

The Ombudsman only has legal powers to investigate certain complaints. You must have received a final response from the Practice before the Ombudsman can look at your complaint and it will generally not look into your complaint if it happened more than 12 months ago, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Phone: 0345 015 4033

• E: email the Ombudsman 

Confidentiality

All complaints will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Where the investigation of the complaint requires consideration of the patient’s medical records, we will inform the patient or person acting on his/her behalf if the investigation will involve disclosure of information contained in those records to a person other than the Practice or an employee of the Practice.

We keep a record of all complaints and copies of all correspondence relating to complaints, but such records will be kept separate from patients’ medical records.

Comment and Suggestions Form

Ideas, suggestions and comments are always welcome at St Bede’s as we are always striving to improve our services. There is a suggestion box in our reception area or you can contact Mrs Andrea Fraser, our Practice Manager.

At St Bede Medical Centre we take any complaint seriously. Should you wish to make a complaint then we ask that you initially discuss this with Mrs Fraser, who will ensure that practice complaints procedure is followed and all relevant practice staff are appropriately involved.

Please complete our form below:

Send us Feedback – St Bede Medical Centre

All GP Practices are required to declare mean earnings (i.e. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice.

The average pay for GPs working in the practice of St. Bede Medical Centre in the last financial year was £84,464 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 5 part time GPs who worked in the practice for more than six months.

Under Health and Safety legislation employers have a duty to provide a safe working environment. Employers should undertake a risk assessment and arrange protection for employees, including, where necessary, immunisation against hepatitis B. If an assessment reveals a risk the employer has a duty to act and should make arrangements with a suitably qualified medical service to meet the relevant obligations.

This practice is not aware of the situation and hazards in the employee’s workplace and does not have occupational expertise to advise on the risks involved.

It is therefore inappropriate for us to offer Hepatitis B immunisations for occupational health reasons. We would also like to make our patients aware that the NHS does not fund hepatitis immunisation for employment purposes.

Patient Notice

As a patient of St Bede Medical Centre you have a named GP who is responsible for your overall care at the practice.

This will normally be your regular GP. If you are unsure who this GP is, please contact the practice and we can let you know.

Additionally, patients over the age of 75 will be offered a regular health review and check-up, either by the GP or Practice Nurse depending on their medical needs.

Read/Download the NHS Constitution Policy

St Bede Medical Centre is a General Medical Services (GMS) practice.

Access

We provide routine appointments normally within a maximum of 2 working days and to provide daily telephone advice.

Chronic disease

We aim to provide high standards of care for patients with a variety of Chronic Diseases including Diabetes, Ischaemic Heart Disease, Hypertension, Heart failure, Respiratory Diseases and Strokes.

Prevention

Offer screening and assessment to patients at high risk of developing Ischaemic Heart Disease, Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension.

Service Provision

Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group is responsible for providing and developing primary medical services in the area.

They can be contacted at:
Pemberton House, Colima Avenue, Sunderland Enterprise Park, Sunderland SR5 3XB
Telephone: 0191 5128484

Rights and Responsibilities of the patient

You are entitled to be seen by a doctor within 48 hours. If you feel your illness is urgent you can be seen the same day. If you make an appointment, it is your responsibility to either attend or cancel. The practice would expect all patients to behave in a courteous manner towards staff.

Violent or Abusive Patients

We follow national guidance with regard to the above. Unreasonable behaviour towards staff or other person present on the practice premises will not be tolerated under any circumstances. The practice will not hesitate to remove you from the list and contact the police where necessary.

Data Protection

The practice is registered under the Data Protection Act 1998. patient information is only available to NHS personnel. Information would only be released to an outside agency. e.g solicitors requesting information after written consent was given.
Data Protection Registered Entry: Z7150743

How to make a comment or complaint

If you have a comment or complaint with regard to the provision of service at this practice, a suggestion box is available at reception or you can contact Mrs Andrea Fraser, Practice Manager. Any formal complaint should be put in writing to Mrs Fraser who will then follow the practice complaints procedure.

At St Bede Medical Centre, we will not prescribe Diazepam for patients who wish to use this for a fear of flying.

There are several reasons for this decision:

• Diazepam is a sedative. This means the medication makes you sleepier and more relaxed. If there was to be an emergency during the flight, this could impair your ability to concentrate, follow instructions or react to the situation. This could seriously affect the safety of you and other passengers.
• Sedative drugs can make you fall asleep, however, when you sleep it is an unnatural non-REM sleep. This means your movements during sleep are reduced and this can place you at increased risk of developing blood clots (DVT).  This risk further increases if your flights is over 4 hours long.
• Although most people respond to Diazepam with sedation, a small proportion experience the opposite effect and can become aggressive. This can also lead to disinhibition and make you behave in ways you normally wouldn’t. This could also impact on your safety and the safety of other passengers or could lead you to get into trouble with the police.
• National prescribing guidelines followed by doctors also do not allow the use of Diazepam (Benzodiazepines) in cases of phobia.
• In several countries, diazepam and similar drugs are illegal.
• Diazepam has a long half-life. This means it stays in your system for a significant amount of time and you may fail random drug testing.

We appreciate a fear of flying is very real and frightening and can be debilitating.  However, there are much better and effective ways of managing this.  Airlines run Fear of Flying courses, and these are more effective than diazepam and have none of the undesirable side effects.

Fear of Flying Courses

Easyjet

www.fearless-flyer.com

tel: 0203 8131644

British Airways

Our courses | Flying With Confidence

Tel:  01252 793 250.

Read/Download our Privacy Notice

ST BEDE MEDICAL CENTRE

Zero Tolerance

St Bede Medical Centre supports the NHS Zero Tolerance campaign. This states that GPs and their staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.

To successfully provide these services a mutual respect between all the 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.

In order for the practice to maintain good relationships with our patients the practice would like to ask all patients to read and take note of the types of behaviour that would be found to be unacceptable:

• Using bad language, shouting or swearing at practice staff
• Any physical violence towards any member of the Primary Health Care Team or other patients
• Verbal abuse towards the staff in any form including verbally insulting the staff
• Racial abuse and sexual harassment will not be tolerated
• Causing damage/stealing from the Practice’s premises, staff or patients
• Obtaining drugs and/or medical services fraudulently.

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

All incidents will be followed up, 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.

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-practice relationship. When trust has broken down it is in the patient’s 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 eg 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.