"I Did No Harm": Compliance With GMC Guidelines for the Use of a Chaperone in Urology Outpatient Clinic.

Objective: To assess the performance of our urology team against General Medical Council (GMC) guidelines for using chaperones during intimate clinical examination.

Background: Intimate physical examination is an integral part of our urological practice. There is a paucity of literature regarding the use of chaperones among urologists. Given the importance of this topic for both patient safety and providing support for the urologist, we decided to assess our performance as per the GMC guidelines for good medical practice.

Methods: We completed an audit loop to evaluate the performance of 12 members in our urology team as regards compliance with GMC guidance for the documentation of chaperone use in the urology clinic. Based on our scoring system, we objectively assessed both overall team performance and individual scores for documenting chaperone use.

Results: There was a significant improvement in the overall documentation rate in both clinical notes (+9.85%) and clinic letters (+36.65%). Raising awareness among team members managed to increase the individual performance scores as well.

Conclusions: This is the first report using a scoring system for objective assessment of a pertinent topic such as the use of chaperone and its documentation. This managed to achieve a significant improvement in our practice.