Everyone at the practice is committed to providing the best possible care we can for our patients. This involves the whole team: doctors, nurses, receptionists, dispensers and, behind the scenes, the practice manager.

As part of the NHS we work within a system called Clinical Governance to help us keep improving our services to patients. The system is based on five principles, and this is how we apply them in our surgery:

Patients and Carers

We like to work in partnership with our patients and carers to provide the most appropriate care and treatment for each individual in our care. This means listening to your concerns, answering your questions and providing information on illnesses and treatments so that you can be fully involved in decisions about your care and treatment.

We are always interested in hearing from our patients about ways we could improve and develop our services.

Clinical Effectiveness

We carry out audits of our clinical work to make sure we are following up-to-date guidelines and best practice from elsewhere in the NHS.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) regularly brings out guidance and National Service Frameworks and we review our practice in light of these.

Risk Management

Having good systems for routine procedures helps us to avoid mistakes. For example every prescription is checked by two staff members when it is dispensed.

We have procedures for reporting mistakes and ‘near misses’ so that we can learn from these and prevent them happening again. These are discussed with staff at training sessions so that everyone is aware of risks and how to avoid them.

Use of Information

We use a clinical information system to help us maintain accurate records for all our patients. With computers this means that a doctor even on a home visit has up-to-date information on test results, reports from the hospital and medication literally at their fingertips.

Doctors and practice nurses use the Internet to check the latest information about conditions and treatments.