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Information Between Professionals For Well Over A Decade

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Introduction It has been NHS policy to actively share information between professionals for well over a decade. In England clinicians should send copies of their clinical letters to their patients. 1 This will give patients a written record of their consultation, the discussion, the decisions made and the reasons for making them. It will give patients the opportunity to read information that they might have misheard or may have forgotten, to reflect on the conclusions arrived at and to discuss them with important others such as friends and carers. It recommended including patients as a partner in their healthcare, encourage greater openness and transparency. There should be an assessment of the patient’s capacity to make decisions about …show more content…

An ‘Easy read’ is a presentation of information in a simple and easy to understand format involving short sentences and images. It is often useful for people with Intellectual disability and for people with conditions which affect the way they process information.3 Patients have a right to see or have copies of their records. The Code of Practice also states that it is important to recognise different communication needs of different patients such as with disability and difficulty in communication does not remove the obligation to help people understand.4 Aims 1) Ascertain the practice of copying clinical letters as per GMC guidelines, Royal college of Psychiatrist guidelines and code of practice from department of health. 2) To find if the implementation of the service improvement project ‘Easy read’ improved the team’s performance. Audit Standards 1)Department of Health (2003a) Confidentiality: NHS Code of Practice. pp. 212. London: Department of Health. 2)Department of Health (2003b) Copying letters to patients: good practice guidelines. 3)Royal College of Psychiatrists (2006) Good Psychiatric Practice: Confidentiality and information sharing (CR133). London: Royal College of Psychiatrists. 4)GMC: Good medical practice (2013) Methods The setting was Salford Intellectual disability team. All clinical letters for the month of

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