Vauxhall Times Spring 2018
The Practice will close on Good Friday and Easter Monday and will reopen as usual on Tuesday
3rd April.
It has been a long harsh winter. Along with the rest of the NHS across the UK, we have coped with a seasonal surge in demand, respiratory illnessand flu in particular - in our patients, our dependants and ourselves and including a flu outbreak at a local Care Home. Doctors and staff kept the surgery open and provided normal opening hours over the recent snow days. We managed the increased demand experienced after this exceptional weather.
We have decorated and updated Tutshill Surgery and alterations to enlarge our clinical facilities at Vauxhall start soon.
AskmyGP- we launch AskmyGP on 27/3. For the past 18-months, we have provided on the day telephone access for all patients for clinical advice and appointments and seen our waiting time to see a GP fall from 14 days or so to 1-2 days. Now we are going to provide an alternative of electronic access for all our patients and their carers with the same principles of timely care and advice delivered to all our patients who request it. This will compliment – not replace our other ways of communication. Ask our receptionist or visit our website.
At Tutshill Surgery we participated in the popular annual Christmas tree event at Tidenham Church. More recently, we had a visit from the Community Engagement Officer of Forest of Dean District Council to discuss how we can become more dementia friendly at our branch surgery.
Anticoagulation – We aim to provide safe and reliable care for all our patients on warfarin or newer oral anticoagulant drugs. These vital drugs are likely to be offered to the majority of patients with an irregular heartbeat(atrial fibrillation) as they have been shown to reduce the risk of stroke for these patients. Our Health Care Assistants assist our Practice Nurses to deliver the majority of warfarin monitoring, which isoverseen by GPs. We anticipate that our Practice Pharmacists who are increasingly reviewing patient’s medications will be looking out for patients on newer oral anticoagulants to review their care more thoroughly.
At the Chepstow Community Hospital, the Cardiologists are now running a “one stop” arrhythmia clinic for patients on the waiting list for Cardiological investigations at the Royal Gwent Hospital.
It is likely that our Tuesday Health Visitor clinics will soon relocate to more generic Chepstow clinic, run at the Community Hospital. If you have, any views- good or bad about this proposal please let our staff know and we can forward your comments.
Road to Well-being- there is a wide range of self-care literature available on the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board “Roads to Well-being” website, looking at many topics including anxiety, depression and self-harm. As part of our Practice’s ongoing educational development, our staff recently studied these leaflets. They judged them easy to access and useful resources which we would like our patients to know about.