Thank you very much to all of the patients who supported our 2022 flu vaccination clinics. These took place on Saturday 24th September & Sunday 2nd October & they were extremely successful, with over 1000 eligible patients vaccinated! We trust that patients continue to prefer the convenience of receiving their flu jabs in these weekend sessions. However, if you require a weekday appointment, or if you are permanently housebound so require a home visit, please contact our reception because we still have a supply of vaccines available. For those patients who do not know, flu vaccinations are a vital source of NHS income for GP surgeries & we are very grateful that so many of our eligible patients choose to have their free NHS flu vaccine at the surgery. To check your eligibility, please click here.
There are a number of new faces at the surgery. Dr John Wray has joined us on a Friday morning, Dr Stephanie Woodcock is working a regular locum session for us on a Wednesday morning, & in November, Ms Claire Snape (ANP) is increasing her sessions from two to four full days per week. We are now an accredited training practice, which means we are also hosting junior doctors including those training to become GPs. Taken together, this means we now have many more clinical appointments available every day, with a larger proportion being pre-bookable up to two weeks in advance. From November, some of our on-the-day face-to-face ANP appointments will be made available online at 8:30am too, for the assessment of urgent physical health problems.
At our last Patient Participation Group (PPG) meeting, we reflected on the results of the national GP Patient Survey & the local GP Access Survey, which have both taken place within the past 12 months. A common theme was the difficulty that some patients are experiencing in contacting the surgery by telephone, including booking on-the-day appointments. We hope that making some on-the-day appointments available to book online & the extra clinical appointments will help with this. In addition, we have arranged for another incoming call handset to be installed, we are advertising for an additional administrator to help us manage incoming calls in the mornings, & we are arranging for the telephone system to be reprogrammed. The latter will reduce the length of the opening messages & the number of options available.
We hope you can see that we are working hard alongside our colleagues across the country to make things better for our patients, & we thank you very much for your continued support. If you would like to join our PPG, please click here for further details.
