Confidentiality And Whistle Blowing

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There are many policies in place in a GP surgery, I will be talking about; Health and Safety, Confidentiality and Whistle Blowing. These policies are in place to ensure that the GP surgery promotes a positive care environment and promotes service users rights.
Health and Safety
Health and Safety in a GP surgery is in place to protect the staff and patients from any mistreatments or accidents within and around the surgery. The responsibilities of a health and safety policy are to ensure that the surgery is a safe environment to be in and there are no hazards that could potentially cause accidents to staff or patients. The surgery must ensure that their computer and filing systems with the surgery are safely recorded and kept confidential. This
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Any potential risks or danger. For example. All wires must be removed or pinned to the side of the wall, this prevents patients and staff from tripping and harming themselves. Surgeries have regular inspections to ensure that all the Health and Safety risks are evaluated and reported to the surgery to allow the surgery to overcome these risks and change the surgery to remove these dangers and to promote a safe environment for all patients. Without Health and Safety policies, patients may suffer from poor standards of care, as the machinery may harm the patients or may break down during the procedure due to lack of maintenance. The Health and Safety policy ensures that machinery is checked and maintained efficiently for medical staffs use. Also without the Health and Safety patients and staff may be disrupted by inappropriate behaviour from staff or patients which may physically or psychologically harm …show more content…
This means this policy is a law to ensure that all information on patients must not be accessed by any other member of the public. Medical files on patients may only be accessed by medical practitioners and the patients themselves. This means that a patient’s medical record cannot be accessed by any family member and anything that a patient says to their doctor or nurse remains between them. However on certain circumstances if the patient or a person a patient knew is in harm or danger it is a medical staffs obligation and job to pass the information on to a higher authority, for example social services or the police. The GP surgery must ensure that all files on the computers are password-protected to prevent the information being accessible. If the medical records are on paper, The paper records must be kept in a file locked away in a cabinet where no patients can see or access it. This creates a positive care environment because patients will trust in their surgery as they know their medical files will be personal to them and no other member of the public can see their information. This will reassure patients that they can confide in their GP and be honest about their situations and

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