Advice centre

Good medical records – whether electronic or handwritten – are essential for the continuity of care of your patients. Adequate medical records enable you or somebody else to reconstruct the essential parts of each patient contact without reference to memory. They should therefore be comprehensive enough to allow a colleague to carry on where you left off.

Removing patients from the practice list is an emotive issue, risking criticism from bodies such as the Northern Ireland Ombudsman, the General Medical Council (GMC) and the media and should only be used after careful consideration and as a last resort.

Valid consent is just as important when treating children and young people as it is with adults. In some situations children are able to give consent themselves, and sometimes others need to take the decision on their behalf. This factsheet sets out the basic information to enable you to obtain the appropriate consent from children and young people.

Doctors may, on occasion, receive a request from a patient’s employer, an insurer or from a government department, for a medical report to be delivered directly to the relevant department, without the patient seeing it.

There is a certain ambiguity surrounding chaperones and what exactly their purpose is. Below are common questions that Medical Protection receives about chaperones.