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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