Citizen's Advice Bureau comes to our practice!

We are happy to announce that the Citizen's Advice Bureau will be holding sessions at Chequers Drive Surgery, Prestwood on Wednesday mornings. All patients from the practice, both Chequers Drive and Hughenden Valley, are welcome to use this service - just ring for an appointment.

To find out more about the Citizens Advice Bureau, please click here.

Dr Herbert

We are delighted to report that Dr Jo Herbert gave birth to a boy on 31st December at 3.50pm. Both mum and son are doing well. Dr Hilary Hogg will be looking after Dr Herbert's patients while she is away.

Seasonal Flu

Please note the seasonal flu vaccine will not offer protection from swine flu but it is very important that you are protected from both once the vaccines are available. When details of the swine flu vaccination programme are available they will be posted on the website and we will display posters in the surgery.

The Department of Health recommends that all those aged 65 years or over, and younger people in certain clinical “at risk” groups, should be vaccinated each year to help protect them against flu infection and its consequences. People who fall into one of the recommended groups are eligible to receive a free flu vaccination. You can help to protect yourself from getting flu and it's complications by having a flu vaccination. Flu viruses are continually changing; therefore it’s important that you keep your protection up to date by ensuring that you have a flu vaccine every year.

Bowel Cancer Screening Programme

We are pleased to announce that the National Bowel Cancer Screening programme has now gone live in Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire.This is a joint venture between the two Trusts in order to detect bowel cancer early in men and women between the ages of 60 and 69. This is a three year rolling programme and people in this age group should be receiving their invitations to participate in screening shortly.

RACE FOR LIFE 2009

Over 20 ladies from Hughenden Valley and Chequers Drive completed the 5K race for life in aid of cancer research. We are very grateful for the sponsorship and help and encouragement that we have received from our patients.

We are very pleased to announce that we raised £1790.66. A big thank you to everyone who sponsored us.

For more information visit the Race for Life website HERE

vaccinationS

Could under 6's who are due or overdue their vaccines please book in for this with Nurse Pippa.
Could teenagers of 13 and over who haven't had their second MMR please book in for this with nurse Jo or nurse Lynne or nurse Pippa.
HPV catch up vaccines are available for teenagers born between 01/09/1990 and 31/08/91- please book with any of the above nurses.

health in pregnancy grant

From April 2009, you can claim a one-off, tax-free payment from H M Revenue & Customs (HMRC) if you're a mum-to-be who's at least 25 weeks pregnant. The payment is called 'Health in Pregnancy Grant' and is to help you prepare for the birth of your baby.  CLICK HERE to visit the Directgov website for more information.
Please note - the application forms for this are available from the midwife, NOT from the doctors.

If your family is receiving child tax credits or benefits, you may be able to apply for Healthy Start, a government scheme providing vouchers for free milk, fruit, vegetables and infant formula to pregnant women and children under 4, click here, www.healthystart.nhs.uk.

Memory problems

Are you affected by memory problems?
Perhaps someone close to you is suffering from memory problems?
Ask at the surgery for a 'memory pack' or pick up a copy of the department of health booklet 'Who cares?' for further useful information about memory problems and how to get help. These useful booklets can be found in the surgery waiting rooms. Ask at reception if we have run out.

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.

More Appointments

Since August 2008 our practice has offered 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 some Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays and at Prestwood the extended hour surgeries will be on Mondays. The pharmacy hours remain unchanged. The extended hours are subject to doctor availability.

Foundation Year 2 Doctors

From August 2008 we have been 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 Friday mornings at Hughenden Valley Surgery, available to all our patients.

Prestwood phlebotomy sessions are held on Thursday mornings. Please note that Phlebotomy at Prestwood Surgery is in an upstairs consulting room, so if you have mobility problems, please ask for a Hughenden phlebotomy appointment as these are held in ground floor consulting rooms. 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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