Chaperones
Our staff are here to make you feel safe
You may request a suitably trained chaperone for any procedure, test or examination.
Friends and family are not permitted to act as chaperones.
If you would like a chaperone please inform a member of staff, ideally when booking your appointment.
For any further information, speak to reception
Interpretation (Language Line Services)
If you require an interpreter, please let reception know when you book your appointment so they are able to arrange a double appointment to allow for this.
We have a statutory and moral responsibility to our patients and the public to ensure the services we provide are equally and easily accessible to all sections of the communities we serve.
Patients must be able to access our services in a way that ensures their language and communication needs do not prevent them from receiving the same quality of healthcare as others, and we recognise that patients, service users, carers, and family and friends may have difficulty with complex medical language and the written word when discussing medical conditions and giving informed consent for procedures.
We are committed to ensuring effective communication and full participation with patients, service users, carers, family and friends. To this end, the practice offers an interpreting and translation service, provided by an external company, who use carefully screened and qualified interpreters, offering a strictly confidential service in a wide range of languages.
The use of family or friends as interpreters
The use of family, friends or unqualified interpreters is strongly discouraged and is not considered good practice.
Using family or friends to interpret information may compromise patient safety and confidentiality, and family or friends could be biased, selective or inaccurate in the information they relay to you. Indeed, the error rate of untrained interpreters may make their use more high risk than having no interpreter at all.
However, patients do have the right to refuse an interpreter and to invite a person of their own choosing to act as an interpreter on their behalf. If so, it will be explained to you that it would be in your best interest to use the service of a professional interpreter for clarity and understanding.
If it is expressly desired that a family member or friend acts as interpreter, your informed consent will be sought in your own language and sought independently of your family member or friend.
The offer of using a professional interpreter, and your choice not to do so, will be recorded in your medical records prior to the consultation taking place.
Children under the age of 16 will not be allowed to interpret for a friend or relative.
If a patient brings a child to interpret for them, it will not be facilitated, and a professional interpreter will be offered instead.
Even in the case of acute emergencies, staff will only ever use the accompanying child to elicit and communicate basic information, for example, what happened, what the patient’s name is etc.