We are facing ever changing times each week and adapting to new procedures. We were offering limited nurses/hca appointments for essential services only such as dressings, immunisations and high risk drug monitoring blood tests, as

advised by NHE England. Nursing team were working upstairs but as from 22nd June we have had a change around and the nurses/hca have moved to work downstairs which means we can offer an increased amount of appointments.

 

We have a set amount of appointments first thing in the morning to enable us to accommodate our shielding patients. All the nurses/hca have PPE and are cleaning after each patient has attended the surgery, we contact the patients before their appointment to make sure they don’t have any COVID-19 symptoms and then test their temperatures before they are allowed into the surgery.

 

The GP’s are doing mainly telephone consultations and video calls, patients can also send photos via a link to the practice and they save into the patients records, but if they feel that a patient needs to be seen they can attend the surgery later in the afternoon. This is within a pre-booked slot which the GP arranges themselves and

greets their own patients at the front door.

 

We are now advising patients if they attend the surgery that they will need to wear a mask or any type of face covering, if they do not have one then we will provide them with one.

 

We are not sure at the moment when the doors will be open again for the patients to come in. We feel that the patients have adapted well to our way of working and in the future we will probably see more working this way. We are still getting some frequent attenders requesting telephone consultations but on the whole it hasn’t been too bad.

 

We kept up contact with our vulnerable patients via the telephones during the peak of the outbreak, the social prescribers attached to the practice have also been in contact with them offering any help from different organisations that they can utilise and the patients are very grateful for the services provided.

 

We are accepting medication requests over the phone for the patients who do not request them via the patient access and all medications are sent via EPS to their nominated pharmacies.

 

Dr Simon Carter will be retiring in August after 25 years of duty at the practice. In view of this we will be recruiting a new salaried/partner. We have left it open as to whether a GP wants to work as salaried or partner, we feel that we need a good candidate rather than just take on a GP who only wants to be a partner (we have recruited 2 within the last 6 months but they both changed their minds). We have received quite a few applicants and will be processing them within the next month.

 

We have recruited a new reception apprentice Kirstie-Leigh, she started in March and has replaced Teresa who retired in May, Dr O Kenney will be back from maternity leave in September and Dr E Hemmings will return early next year. We are also using our 2 regular locums Dr P Kaur and Dr S Putta.

 

At the last PPG meeting Josie did a demo of the new website, we were wondering if any of you had managed to have a look at it and if so did you have any feedback for us. We carry on adding information on a regular basis and please if you have any ideas do let us know. If you go onto there and try to request medication it does re-direct you to the patient access.