GP surgery confidentiality

[Raspberrypeach]

Hi
Just looking for advice especially from anyone who works in a gp surgery.
Had appointment with gp doctor and discussed problem regarding my husband having an affair with colleague.
One of our in laws works on reception/ admin side and I'm so worried that they will have found out.
Can all staff look up patient records at any time?

They can but they really shouldn't unless they need to in the course of their job. With the system we have, any staff member accessing the record shows up. Also if they did access the record, this kind of thing, which would be in the free text if recorded at all, would not show up on the first page and it is unlikely that an admin person would see that bit in the usual course of duty. This might be different on other systems but we use the most popular one.

At our surgery the receptionists & admin staff add notes to patient records if they have, for example, sent a letter or phoned them, checked during a patient phone call if a prescription has been issued or if they are issuing the repeat prescriptions for the dr to sign or whatever so, in theory, they can see whatever is written. Your in law would be incredibly foolish to go and look at friends/relatives notes and read confidential information as they would be dismissed for gross misconduct as there is a audit trail of who has been on patient records.

Thanks for the advice - I hope to goodness she hasn't looked!