Respect and Reasonable Expectations in NHS Primary Care

At our practice, we are committed to providing safe, respectful, and timely care to all our patients. We understand that health concerns can be stressful, and we aim to support our patients through both urgent and routine issues in a fair and consistent way.

However, we have noticed a rise in behaviours that make it difficult for our team to work safely and effectively. These include turning up without an appointment demanding immediate care, swearing or being verbally abusive to staff, or using emergency services inappropriately when care has been offered through the correct channels.

We want to be clear: General Practice is not one of the emergency services. While we do everything we can to accommodate urgent need, our practice operates within NHS systems that require appointments to be booked and for staff to be treated with courtesy. Aggressive or disruptive behaviour not only affects our team but impacts other patients too — often those with serious or time-critical health needs.

We kindly ask all patients to:

• 📆 Respect appointment times and booking systems
• 🚑 Use 111 and 999 services appropriately
• 👩‍🦳 Treat our staff as they would wish to be treated themselves

Our staff have the right to work in an environment free from abuse and intimidation. Persistent inappropriate behaviour may result in removal from our practice list, in line with NHS policy.

We are here to help — and we thank the vast majority of patients who work with us respectfully to get the care they need.