Patient leaflet

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Our Chaperoning Policy

If you wish to be chaperoned during a consultation please let us know before coming in or let a receptionist or the doctor know when you arrive for your appointment. We are committed to the policy of safeguarding everyone, maintaining patient dignity and confidentiality. We are able to provide a chaperone providing we have 24 hours notice.

Translator

We are committed to making sure that every patient fully understands the medical advice that has been given by the doctor. Good communication is a vital part of maintaining high standards of patient care and patient dignity. If you need a translator or an advocate please let us know prior to your appointment with as much advance notice as possible so that we can arrange this for you as we may not be able to arrange one on the day.

Disability Access

There are lifts located at the side of the building via no 20 Harley Street. This ensures that there is easy access into our clinic.

Food and Drinks

We are not able to provide any food or drinks apart from water unless you have consent from the doctor. You are advised to bring your own snacks.

Complaints/Feedback/Suggestions

Complaints

We are aware that things can go wrong resulting in a patient feeling that they have genuine cause for complaint. If so we would wish for the matter to be resolved as quickly and as amicably as possible. Should you have anything to say regarding any aspect of our service or premises or any member of our medical staff including the surgeon please do not hesitate to voice your complaint either verbally or in writing to the clinic manager as soon as possible. Our clinic manager will be happy to deal with your concerns appropriately. We have a robust complaints policy (a copy of which is available at reception.) We take patient complaints extremely seriously. Our aim as a clinic is to ensure that our patients receive the best possible care and service and leave happy with the service that we have provided. We aim to resolve complaints as quickly as possible and our aim is to communicate with you directly to understand why the complaint has been made and to resolve this without any unnecessary delays. Our complains policy details the timescales of resolving complaints and is CQC approved. At the heart of our service is the goal of great communication and patient dignity.

We are members of CRS, which is an independent mediation body who will help patients with complaints to address and resolve their issues.

Feedback

Patient feedback is extremely valuable to us in improving our service. We provide forms located in our reception area. On the day of surgery you will be asked to fill our patient feedback form in so that we re informed about how satisfied you were with your experience in our clinic.This is extremely valuable in helping us to improve our services. We take patient feedback extremely seriously as we want all our patients to be happy and your feedback form is stored for the CQC to see should we have a visit or a CQC inspection. In addition we carry our regular audits of different aspects of patient satisfaction using the form you have filled in.Every patient will be contacted in writing after their treatment for feedback (subject to your consent). This information invaluable to the smooth, and safe provision of patient care. We regularly audit our performance based on your help with feedback.

Suggestions

Patient and/ or relative suggestion box is available in our clinic in the reception area and is invaluable feedback helping us to help you by improving our service and acts like a mirror for us to improve our clients’ experience.

Hair Transplant Restoration Surgery

Hair Transplant Surgery is carried out by two techniques, FUE and FUT. Both procedures are carried out under local anesthesia without any form of sedation and the patient is fully awake throughout the procedure.

FUE stands for Follicular Unit Excision. In this technique, individual follicular units are punched and extracted by 0.8 mm to 1mm punch manually and transplanted in the recipient area with hair loss. This is carried out under magnification with the help of assistants who are trained in assisting the surgeon. This is very precision and attention requiring procedure and on average takes 5 to 8 hours.

FUT also known as Strip surgery in which a strip of occipital scalp (back of the head) ranging from 5 x 1 cm to 20 x 1.5cm strip of skin is harvested ( excised ) followed by suturing of resulting wound. Follicles are then dissected out under magnification by the Specialist hair assistants and prepared for implantation into the pre determined recipient area. This procedure can take 5 to 8 hours depending on the size of the session. Post operative pain can be cause of concerns for some patients which is to be expected. Sutures are dissolvable but can be removed after two weeks if bothersome for some patients.

Patient Pathway

Patient makes an inquiry and contacts the clinic

Clinic arranges a Pre Op consultation with the Surgeon

Patient takes a cooling off period of minimum of one to two weeks and takes away paperwork including Advanced consent forms

Patient may request and attend a second pre op consultation with the surgeon

Patient receives verbal and pre- op information and prepare for surgery and fixes a date for surgery and post op instructions.

The patient has a telephone call prior to surgery to ensue they are fully informed of the pre operative instructions. These are sent out via e mail to the patient.The patient is given the telephone number of the clinic manager.

Patient has Surgery and details of post op appointments and post op support phone numbers which virtually are 24/7, 365 days of the years.

Patient attends surgery and has a full consultation with the surgeon going through pre op and post op instructions and the treatment.

After surgery the instructions post operatively re explained again and given in writing to the patient.

The patient receives a post operative phone call the day after surgery to make sure things are going smoothly and there are no issues.

The patient is invited for a post operative review within two weeks of surgery so the surgeon is able to examine the hair and scalp. After that and before final discharge after 18 months, all patients are entitled and informed that they can see the surgeon at any time if they have any concerns what we call, to see Surgeon on PRN basis.

The patient is under the care of the clinic for a full 18 months post surgery to ensure that the surgery and results have progressed smoothly and the patient is happy with their surgery results.

Patient confidentiality and patient records

Please note that we do have a strict policy regarding confidentiality and data protection. In this respect we will only give out results to the person they relate to unless that person has given prior permission for their release or if they are not capable of understanding them.

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases we may be required to allow access to patient records.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.