Patient Records

The Data Protection Act 2018 gives you the statutory right of access to any information, manual (paper) or computerised.  

You will appreciate that health data relating to any individual is highly confidential and NHS Grampian must ensure that it releases such data only to the person to whom it relates, or to a person authorised to act on his/her behalf.  Because of the confidential nature of data held by Health Trusts it is essential for us to obtain proof of your identity two forms of identity must be provided, this is to ensure no information is released to unauthorised individuals.

You may wish to authorise someone else to make your application on your behalf. If you have parental responsibilities you may make an application to see your child’s notes. 

The Practice will deal with your request as quickly as possible. The information should be available to you within 8 weeks of receipt of your accurately completed form and confirmation of consent. Under certain circumstances, this period can be extended to 3 months but we will keep you informed of the progress of your request during this extended period.

For confidentiality we cannot email or post any medical notes.  If you request a copy of your notes you will need to arrange to collect these yourself from the Medical Practice. 

To request access to part, or all of your patient notes please go to the SUBJECT ACCESS area of our website.

Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients’ control and can be shared on a ‘need to know’ basis.

The recent coverage around GP data being shared with NHS Digital for planning and research purposes only applies in England and is an NHS England initiative.

In Scotland however we have the SPIRE programme, further information on this can be found on their website

SPIRE or the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource is a service that has been developed to help GPs, the NHS in Scotland and researchers to learn from information held at GP practices. The website provides information on the service and if patients do not wish for their data to be processed via the SPIRE programme.

If you wish to opt out of SPIRE please complete the form below and send it to [email protected]

There is a Central NHS Computer System called the Emergency Care Summary (ECS). The Emergency Care Summary is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. It will contain information on your medications and allergies.

Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held securely on central NHS databases.   

As with all systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems, although even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.

On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice. If you don’t want an Emergency Care Summary to be made for you, tell your GP surgery. Don’t forget that if you do have an Emergency Care Summary, you will be asked if staff can look at it every time they need to. You don’t have to agree to this.