Zero Tolerance Policy

The Practice considers aggressive behaviour to be any personal, abusive and/or aggressive comments, cursing and/or swearing, physical contact and/or aggressive gestures.

The Practice will request the removal of any patient from the practice list who is aggressive or abusive towards a doctor, member of staff, other patient, or who damages property.

All instances of actual physical abuse on any doctor or member of staff, by a patient or their relatives will be reported to the police as an assault.
 

Removal from Practice List

A good doctor-patient relationship, based on mutual respect and trust, is the cornerstone of good patient care. The removal of patients from general practitioners' lists is an exceptional and rare event, and a last resort in an impaired doctor-patient relationship. When trust has irretrievably broken down, it is in the patient's interest to find a new GP.

Patients also have a right to change their doctor. They are not required to give reasons or any period of notice and there is no requirement for the GP to be notified.

Most removals of patients from GPs’ lists occur for administrative reasons, for example because the patient has moved to an address outside the practice area or has died. Violence or threatening behaviour by the patient is a special case where removal is justified. Otherwise, the sole criterion for removal should be an irretrievable breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship.

GPs have the right to request that any patient should be removed from their lists. Where a practice has reasonable grounds to remove the patient from its list of patients, it must inform the primary care organisation (PCO) in writing, and must notify the patient in writing of the reasons for removal. However, where the practice believes that it is not appropriate to give specific reasons it is sufficient to state that there has been a breakdown in the relationship between the practice and the patient.

The removal will not take effect until the eighth day after the request is received by the authority unless the patient is accepted by, allocated or assigned to another GP sooner than this. The patient is always notified by the PCO.