AUTUMN 2008 LATEST NEWS
good news
Our Senior Registrar, Dr Charlotte Copas, is
expecting a baby early next year. She will be going on Maternity Leave in
January and we wish her well.
Cheaper gas?
We understand that if you are currently a British
gas customer and receiving certain government benefits you may be able to get a
cheaper tariff and various other help.
Telephone 0800 072 7100 or follow this link:
www.britishgas.co.uk
(As a GP surgery we don't take any responsibility for gas supplies or pricing,
but thought this might be helpful.)
Thank you to the patient equipment fund
We recently bought a Sony DSC – W55 cybershot
camera, a Sony VAD-W8 lens adapter and a Dermlite Hybrid Dermoscope for our
in-house dermatology clinics and minor surgery service using our patient
equipment fund.
The Sony Sony DSC – W55 cybershot camera is a 7.2 megapixel camera with a 3 x
zoom Carl Weiss lens, a 6.2cm LCD panel and a Macro function that allows
excellent imaging of skin lesions from a close distance. This when connected to
the Dermlite Hybrid Dermoscope using the Sony VAD-W8 lens adapter allows
excellent x 10 magnified digital images to be produced and stored.
The Dermlite Hybrid Dermoscope is a pocket epiluminescence microscopy device
designed to view skin lesions with high magnification and clarity. Two sets of
LED’s can be activated independently. One set of 24 LED’s provides glare-free
cross polarized light by cancelling the reflected light from the skin, whereas
the other set of 8 LED’s provides non-polarized light for traditional immersion
fluid dermoscopy. A high quality 25mm 10 x lens with colour correction and
reduced image distortion produces an image rich in surface detail.
We are very grateful to all the patients who helped contribute towards our
equipment fund. All contributions go directly towards the purchase of essential
equipment.
sad news
It was with great sadness that we recently
learned of the death of Mrs Beryl Hammond after a short illness. Beryl was
District Nurse with the practice for over 20 years and retired 11 years ago.
After her retirement she moved to Nottinghamshire near to family but always kept
in touch with her friends in Buckinghamshire. The funeral has taken place in the
Midlands, however there will be a short ceremony on Saturday 20th September at
1.30pm at Hughenden Park as Beryl requested that her ashes be brought back to
her husband's grave.
More Appointments
From August, our practice is offering over 70
more GP appointments per week than the previous year. We are also offering over
150 phlebotomist appointments per week, freeing up a significant number of nurse
appointments. These changes should make it much easier for you to get an
appointment with the right healthcare professional when you need one. The
receptionist will always try to ensure that you see the appropriate healthcare
professional, so please be patient if they need to ask you one or two questions.
Please can you inform the practice in reasonable time if you cannot attend an
appointment; last month 75 patients did not attend their appointments and did
not let us know with sufficient notice that we could rebook the appointments.
extended hours
The surgery now offers extended hours for prebooked consultations. We hope that
this will be helpful to our patients who are commuters or working. At Hughenden
these will be Tuesday evenings and alternate Wednesday evenings and alternate
Thursday evenings, and at Prestwood the extended hour surgeries will be on
Monday and Tuesday evenings. The pharmacy hours remain unchanged. The extended
hours are subject to doctor availability.
Foundation Year 2 Doctors
From August 2008 we will be supervising the training of foundation year 2
doctors. These doctors have already completed 1 year post qualification, but are
not trained GPs, and will therefore be supervised by the partners in the
practice as they learn about General Practice. You may be asked by the
receptionist if you would be happy to be seen by the Foundation Year 2 Doctor.
This is likely to involve a slightly longer appointment than usual.
making sense of testing
Leading medical bodies, clinicians and scientists are alerting the public and
policy makers to the potential damage caused by health tests and scans for well
people and the need for a national system to evaluate laboratory tests.
Follow this link to a website with further information on this issue and other
concerns about health related matters that you might come across in the media
from scares about plastic bottles, fluoride and the MMR vaccine to controversies
about genetic modification, stem cell research and radiation.
Follow this link:
www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/
NEW FEATURE
Read 'A Typical Afternoon in the life of a Doctor's Receptionist'
Click here
»
Phlebotomy (blood taking)
We are pleased to announce that we have arranged for
regular phlebotomy for all our patients, to be provided at our Hughenden Valley
Surgery.
Sessions are currently on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at Hughenden Valley
Surgery, available to all our patients. Sessions at
Prestwood Surgery have not yet been fixed but patients from our practice can
attend sessions at either end to suit their own convenience. Warfarin blood
tests will still need to be taken by our HCA, Margaret, as they are sent to a
different hospital.
Appointments for blood tests will be made through reception in the usual way.
The computer generated forms for in-house phlebotomy must be brought to the
phlebotomist who will otherwise not be able to take blood, and these forms are
not valid at the hospitals.
PHARMACY
Click here
to read more on our Pharmacy.
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