Staff Changes

We are pleased to welcome Dr Yvonne Burke and Wendy Magyar, health care assistant to the team.

New Services Available

Warfarin monitoring.
Implanon contraceptive fitting.

Services for Teenagers at the Surgery

The national strategy for sexual health published recently states:
'We want our population to be in good sexual health and well educated in how to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies. And to have services that meet their needs in a non-judgemental and supportive way.'

The practice is improving our services for teenagers in line with this national plan.

Nurse Jo Toomey will see teenagers for health checks and offer information on sexual health issues. In particular we are offering Chlamydia screening and treatment for 16-25 year olds. Chlamydia is common, often causes no symptoms and can cause long term damage so it is important to try and seek out and destroy this bug. We also participate in the C-card condom distribution scheme. This is a national scheme, where once a teenager has registered; they can obtain free condoms from any of the participation NHS organisations. As well as condoms we offer contraceptive services to all ages (not just teenagers, although condoms are only free to youngsters).

Of course, all of the doctors are happy to see teenagers in ordinary appointments but are aware that often teenagers are wary of seeing a GP who they think of as being their parents’ doctor. All consultations are completely confidential, which again is a common teenager concern. We would always encourage younger teenagers to involve their parents in their contraception and sexual health decisions but they have a legal right to confidentiality, as do all patients.

All our staff, including our receptionists, are also bound by confidentiality rules and teenagers should be assured that they only need to ask for the service they need to make sure they are given the correct type of appointment.

Travelling into town for contraceptive and sexual health services can be a problem for Calverton residents so we want to ensure that our teenagers have access to good services near to home. Please let us know if there are ways we could be improving these services.

Fatness and Fitness
Currently Britain is facing an obesity epidemic. Being overweight and inactive leads to heart disease and diabetes and there is huge concern amongst doctors about how we can deal with the expected health consequences of obesity. It is life expectancy is starting to fall after generations of improvement just because we are becoming fat and inactive at an alarming rate.

We have got used to most people being overweight and think it’s normal. Take a look at photo of the 1966 cup final crowd; you will probably think everyone is too skinny. They’re not: we have got used to being fat!

The government is trying to encourage change. The change4life campaign is government run and aiming to change our habits, targeting children first. The worry about children’s obesity is growing. Have a look at their website for ideas about how to help your gets get and stay healthy. We are happy to weight and measure children and give advice on what to aim for.

Activity is very important: even if you struggle to get your weight down. Being fat but fit is much better than fat but inactive. In adults it is recommended that 30minutes for at least 5 days a week is the minimum for health. For kids it’s 60 minutes. Any kind of exercise that raises your heart rate and makes you feel like you have done a bit of work is good:, dancing, gardening, brisk walking, heavy cleaning: whatever fits with your lifestyle. You don’t have to wear Lycra to do exercise. To keep it up it needs to be part of you weekly routine and not just an occasional past-time.

In the surgery we are happy to see you to weigh and measure and advise on your ideal weight. There is no easy solution to weight loss; it always boils down to eating less and burning up more calories by being more active. Eating only more a calories a day than you need adds up to pounds on the waist by the end of a year. Organisations like weight watchers are helpful in supporting and guiding you too. Crash diets and extreme diets don’t work long term; it’s about making changes that you can keep up for years to come.

The problem is not something that the health service can tackle on its own, it has to be a much wider change, involving transport polices that get us out of our cars, safe places for children to play, leisure facilities, encouraging healthy eating, encouraging breastfeeding. At the surgery we are tying to may links with other organisations to try and make Calverton a healthier environment. Let us know if you have any ideas too.

Reprieve for our dispensary
After the consultation process the government has decided against changes to GP dispensing which is good news. We are pleased that we can continue to provide this service and relieved that the treat to certain jobs within our organisation has been lifted. Thank you to any of you who contributed to the government consultation.

Surveys, surveys surveys
Many of you will have an NHS/ MORI survey form dropping through your letterbox in the next few weeks. The government is posting these out to five and a half million people in England to see what they think of GP services. It’s rather a daunting 8 page document and is sent to a random selection of people including those who may not have had occasion to use GP services in the recent past. I do wonder if it is money well spent.

A lot of emphasis in this survey is put on access: how easy it is to get an appointment. This is always a thorny issue: demand is highly unpredictable. Many of you will be aware that we have made a big move to the use of telephone consultations in managing this challenge.

I thought I would explain a little about our telephone triage system and clarify that it should count as a consultation as far as the survey is concerned. We see the use of the phone as an important tool in working efficiently to the benefit of patients and enabling us to meet the demand for same day consultations. Anyone requesting a same day consultation will be phoned back by a doctor. The doctor has the full records in front of them as they talk and are consulting from the privacy of their consulting room exactly as in face to face visit. This allows the doctors to assess urgency and make a plan about when the best time for someone is to be seen. About 30 percent of our calls can be sorted out without the need for a face to face consultation. This means we can meet clinical priorities efficiently, we can avoid using non medically qualified staff to assess urgency and on the busiest days control the workload to make sure the standards of our consultations are maintained. Often any necessary blood tests can be organised before the appointment so the results are available when you see the doctor which can cut down on the total number of trips to the surgery. This method does require our patients to make they available during our telephone time so we can call them back, (answering machines and unavailable mobiles are a source of frustration for us!)

There has been another survey recently, administered by us, and is a contractual obligation on us at least for this year. Thank you to those of you who have taken the time to complete the patient satisfaction survey that we have been distributing to patients visiting the surgery. The results are currently being analysed by the poll company and we will publish the results on our website as soon as they become available.

Thankfully, in our contract for next year the government has reduced the emphasis on surveys and instead will award quality payments if we meet clinical targets. We will still welcome feedback on our services.

Kesten Challen

PATIENT SURVEY
Results of our annual patient survey 2007» ( PDF file 1.86MB)

New Year News from The Calverton Practice
Patient participation group
This is now up and running. There are seven patient members plus representation from the surgery. So far there have been two meetings. As with all new ventures it will take time to establish the relationship between the group and the surgery such that the group can become a valuable resource in our attempts to expand and improve services.

In order to make change it is important that we seek opinions from the users of our services and we hope that the group will be the conduit for those opinions. In the next edition of the Echo we will hope to publish contact details for group members so that concerns or ideas from patients can be fed back to us. We are still interested in hearing from anyone else who may have an interest in joining the group.

Our hope is that the group can help improve the health of the locality in ways beyond the traditional confines of general practice. One area that the group has already started work on is the area of healthy eating and exercise. We are in discussions with Gedling Borough Council about using some time at the leisure centre. We are talking to other bodies about cycle routes round the village and seeing if we can have designated walks marked out so that walkers can know how far they have actually walked. All of this would be part of an agreed exercise plan. Obesity and inactivity are major health issues and it is clear the health service cannot solve the problem by medical means. We have also signed a contract to put screens into the waiting rooms which will show health related content.

Liquid nitrogen
We have recently acquired a liquid nitrogen tank which means we have been able to resume offering on site treatment for a range of minor skin conditions. In years gone by we have obtained liquid nitrogen in small quantities from a local supplier but changes in safety rules mean we could no longer transport it without a special vehicle. The hospitals were not offering a replacement service as warts and skin tags are regarded as cosmetic problems. We have always felt this service has been valued and are pleased that we can now treat these problems again.