Patient rights and responsibilities

Patient responsibilities

To provide you with the best care, we need information that only you can provide, including:

• any problems that might affect your medical conditions
• honest information about your family medical history and your medications
• telling us when you don’t understand the purpose of your treatment or the possible alternatives.

Patient rights

The Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights describes what care you or someone you care for can expect when receiving health care.

View or download the Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights
View or download NSW Health's Your health care rights and responsibilities

Open disclosure

Open disclosure means we will have an open and honest discussion with a patient and their family or carer following a patient safety incident.

If something goes wrong with your treatment or care we will tell you about it as soon as possible. We will apologise, explain what happened, tell you about the possible effects and what we are doing to prevent it happening again.

Talk to a nurse for more information on this topic or read frequently asked questions about open disclosure from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare.