The majority of people who need support from GP Practices do so in a respectful way that helps create a safe environment. Sadly, there are a small number of people who can be abusive and aggressive to both staff and other patients.
Abbey Medical Practice has a zero tolerance approach in order to protect our staff, other patients and visitors to the Practice. The Practice recognises that there can be contributory reasons for patients behaving in difficult or challenging ways, however, where this tips over to aggression or violence, the Practice will ask the patient to leave immediately. Where necessary staff are instructed to call the Police and we will deny future access to our service on a permanent basis and you will be asked to register at another Practice.
We also do not tolerate patients not being truthful with our Patient Services Team when booking an appointment. We have many patients who call the Practice for an appointment which is deemed not urgent and a routine appointment is offered albeit in a couple of days time or a week. Patients are calling the Practice again trying to speak to a different member of the team with different symptoms to enable them to get an urgent appointment on the day. This impacts the appointment availability on the day and it is impacting our patients who do have an urgent clinical need.
As you can imagine this is a clear breakdown in the Patient/Practice relationship and we will write to our patients where necessary and there could be a possibility that you are removed from the Practice list.