The merry go round

The surgery has been busy in part due to unseasonal coughs and cold but also because of short term absences for training and education. This is a brief summary of the behind the scenes activity (the merry-go-round) in the last three weeks.


Most of the staff successfully completed their annual resuscitation training (a few who could not make the session will catch up on it in the coming months). The surgery hosted a multidisiplinary Gold Standard Framework (GSF) meeting - (GSF is a systematic evidence based approach to optimising the care for patients nearing the end of life and is concerned with helping people to live well until the end of life with any end stage illness and in any setting.) All our clinical staff met for a clinical case review and met again separately for a management meeting to decide how best to meet the new care targets for this year's Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF). 

Dr Mustapha attended an academic half day with a session to introduce GPs to the new Stroke Service at the Princess Royal University Hospital as well as updates on sexual health and HIV. Dr Young attended the Royal College of General Practititioners Annual Conference on Drugs and Alcohol - with some very interesting debates around the changes in emphasis coming from the coalition government (stabilisation vs abstinence). Dr Selby and Dr Young attended the launch of the new Bromley Healthcare, the social enterprise that provides our district nurses, health visitors, occupation therapists, community dentists, and numerous other community specialists who help to provide care for patients in the community.
Our manager, Sue Robinson has attended the local Practice Manager's Forum to discuss and debate, more efficient and better coordinated provision of services.
Dr Young has attended the selection meeting for the new Chief Executive Officer of Bromley Healthcare and the bimonthly Local Medical Committee meeting, while Dr Mustapha and Mrs Robinson will attend the Practice Based Commissioning (Unity) Cluster meeting for our locality tomorrow night.

The current pace of change is frightening and the future of the NHS uncertain but we are trying our best to keep pace with the change; representing the best interests of patients and keeping ourselves up to date clinically too.  We hope that on balance all this activity is beneficial and not detrimental to patient care.  

Maytime

It is hard to take in how fast this year seems to be disappearing. May already. The run of bank and public holidays has not helped the smooth running of the appointment system and while our audit continues (giving us a good picture of demand outstripping supply) we are trying to offer some extra capacity in the short term to ease the pressure on appointments.

Today is a training day and at lunchtime all staff will be getting their annual refresher course in resuscitation training.

Other changes include an alteration to the late night Tuesday surgeries - reception is now open for business as usual until 8pm on a Tuesday night. In addition there are also appointments available with the nurse between 6.30 - 8pm on Tuesdays and Mary our healthcare assistant offers vascular screening checks to invited patients on Tuesday evening too. Reception will also be open on alternate Saturday morning during the 8.30-10am surgery.

I hope shortly to ask for guidance from you about the issues you think it is important for us to address. Look out for a questionnaire, coming soon.

Finally, despite news elsewhere to the contrary, I am sorry to say that we have not managed to purchase the adjacent building. We continue to explore all options to try and make this happen but things look less hopeful.