Patient Participation Group Meeting: Minutes August 2023
Attendees:
Dr Gareth Brown | Christine Cain | LH | EO | EH | MS
Dr Brown started the meeting by discussing recent developments within the Practice. As we are a training Practice we have 3 GP Registrars with us at the moment, Dr Hashem being trained by Dr Brown, Dr Uwadia being trained by Dr Sahoo and Dr Uwa being trained by Dr Krishnan.
Dr Abu is now fully qualified and is going to continue working in the Practice. Jas Kaur the pre reg pharmacist is now a qualified pharmacist and will staying with us, Nabiha Ashraf is our new pre reg pharmacist.
Pearl Cusworth deals with adult mental health issues and Beccy Horwood deals with child mental health problems.
John Kelly is a Social Prescriber dealing with health and wellbeing in adults and Jade Hizzett is the social prescriber for children.
Paul Miller is our First Contact Physiotherapist who works between Horden, Blackhall and William Brown Centre
Covid vaccinations will be carried out at the Practice this year (Peterlee Site) and eligible patients will receive them in conjunction with their flu vaccinations these will start sometime in September.
Waiting lists for routine hospital appointments are at an all-time high but urgent 2 week wait appointments are still working well. There is an increase in patient demand and on-call work, patients are coming to their appointments with multiple problems and are taking up a lot more than the 10 minutes allocated, a double appointment can be requested, and this will help with the surgeries running late for other patients’ appointments. More clinical staff would increase the appointments, but unfortunately we haven’t enough rooms available. A change in the GP contract now offers appointments out of hours at the Hub in Peterlee Health Centre on a Saturday and Sunday. These appointments must be booked through the Surgery and is not a walk in.
CQC rated the Practice good the last time they visited last time but we are expecting another visit at any time although we have heard, this may be done over the telephone.
Dr Brown passed round the results of the recent GP surgery for all to see and we had very good results compared to some other local practices, although the percentage of patients getting to see their preferred GP was a bit lower but if something is urgent the patients should be prepared to see any GP if their preferred GP is full or on leave.
MS mentioned that Peterlee Surgery needs better disabled entry and also more disabled parking spaces. For the number of spaces, the small car park at Peterlee has, we believe it has the allocated number of disabled spaces. There is a ramp leading to the automatic doors at the Surgery. The building is owned by a consortium and managed by the landlord. We would be more than happy to pass on any suggestions for our patients.
EH suggested we have a board in the waiting room (You say we do board) to inform the patients when a suggestion has been acted upon. We feel this is a good idea and will look to implement something like this following the next meeting, where we will have more ideas.
EH suggested having a volunteer group set up to organise coffee mornings etc and also said she was involved in education sessions in the past where for example a tent was set up in the park where patients could call in and have their BP’s and bloods taken which can be useful in saving GP and Nurse appointments. EH suggested that some of the events we could ask patients for a donation towards equipment for future events such as BP machines.
Dr Brown suggested he could go to the local Andy’s man club to give a talk as he has been recommending the club to some of his patients and it would be good to know more about it.
Dr Brown suggested stop smoking/vaping sessions in secondary schools.
EH suggested informing patients of changes within the Practice by Facebook and in the waiting rooms and also suggested getting under 16’s more involved by perhaps organising meetings. EH also said she would be prepared to do some patient surveys in the surgery waiting room if that was something the practice required. We try to use our practice Facebook page to keep patients up to date with services and upcoming sessions, reminders for practice training dates etc, however, agree that changes could also be shared via Facebook. We also have TV screens at both sites and try to keep these up to date as well as our Facebook page.
Next meeting Tuesday 7 November 2023.
