Bromley GP Alliance (BGPA) has a legal responsibility to provide a safe and secure working environment for staff.
BGPA fully supports the NHS Zero Tolerance Policy. The aim of this policy is to tackle the increasing problem of violence against staff working in the NHS and ensures that all staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.
All patients and staff are expected to behave in an acceptable, respectful manner. Any incident in which a member of staff is abused, threatened, or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work is unacceptable and not tolerated. This includes the serious or persistent use of verbal or physical abuse, aggressive tone and/or language and swearing/foul language, including sexual harassment and issue affecting staff protected under the Equality Act.
BGPA understands that ill patients do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint. BGPA asks you to treat all its staff courteously and act reasonably.
All incidents will be followed up and may result in you being removed from our service and your GP Practice being notified if your behaviour has been unreasonable.
Aggressive behaviour, be it violent or verbally abusive, will not be tolerated. In extreme cases, the Police will be contacted if an incident is taking place and the patient is posing a threat to staff or other patients.
Removal from BGPA Services
A good patient-clinician relationship, based on mutual respect and trust, is the cornerstone of good patient care. The removal of a patient from our service is an exceptional and rare event and is a last resort in an impaired patient-clinician relationship.
When trust has irretrievably broken down, it is in the patient’s interest, just as much as that of BGPA, that they find an alternative service. An exception to this is on immediate removal on the grounds of violence e.g. when the Police are involved.
Removing Other Members of the Household
In rare cases, however, because of the possible need to visit patients at home it may be necessary to terminate responsibility for other members of the family or the entire household.
The prospect of visiting patients where a relative who is no longer a patient of BGPA’s service by virtue of their unacceptable behaviour resides, or being regularly confronted by the removed patient, may make it too difficult for BGPA to continue to look after the whole family. This is particularly likely where the patient has been removed because of violence or threatening behaviour and keeping the other family members could put our clinicians and staff at risk.