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GP Patient Survey results
Okehampton Medical Centre
The national GP patient survey results have recently been published and I would like to pick out a couple of important points raised by the responses for our practice in this issue of Oke Links and the next.
According to respondents, only 47% usually get to see or speak to their preferred GP when they would like to. We understand this can be frustrating and causes anxiety to people who value the relationship they have with their GP.
I would ask you please to be kind to the staff at the practice if they are unable to offer you an appointment with your preferred GP or at your preferred time or date. It is not their fault. There are several reasons why your GP may not be available or may not be the right person to deal with your problem.
Missed appointments are one reason why waiting times to see your GP may be increased - if you let us know that you cannot make your appointment we can offer it to someone else.
We have tried to make it as easy as possible to cancel your appointment - you can do this at your convenience by text message; you can reply to your appointment confirmation or reminder; you can also cancel using our automated phone system or online via Patient Access. All of these ways cancel your appointment directly in the system and so are available again in real time.
Nationally there is a crisis in general practice and a shortage of GPs. We have struggled to recruit for vacancies recently, however, I am pleased to say that we have two GPs joining us – one in September and one in November. This means we will have less appointments available until then. Although we have additional ‘locum’ GP clinics wherever we can, this is limited during school holidays.
Although we allocate each patient their own GP, no GP works five days a week so there will always be days when your GP is not in.
We also run a duty doctor system which includes the GP calling all patients who request an appointment on the day. The duty doctor can see patients themselves but also has appointments available to book into in other GPs clinics.
This means your GP may not be able to see you for a routine appointment because they are duty doctor or because they are dealing with problems that need to be dealt with that day.
We have a range of healthcare professionals who can help you – it does not necessarily need to be the GP. In addition to the minor illness and minor injuries nurse prescribers and the nurses who manage long term conditions, we have a home visiting paramedic to acutely unwell patients and we have just recruited an advanced practitioner, also a qualified paramedic, who will be able to support the duty doctor with telephone triage, seeing patients in the practice and in patients’ homes from October.
Our clinical pharmacist joined the team last month and has been a huge support in providing answers to patient queries and concerns, improving patient safety by reviewing our medicines management and he also offers long term conditions clinics.
The wellbeing support we offer through our wellbeing co-ordinator and health and wellbeing coach enables people whose concerns may be emotional, social or psychological to be supported and signposted to more appropriate services.
The expertise that each member of our medical, clinical, health and wellbeing team bring means that your GP may not be the most appropriate person to deal with your concern – and we want you to have the best and most effective support by getting you to the right person as quickly as possible. This is why we ask you to give as much information as you can about your problem to the member of staff who takes your initial call.
Kiran Bakhshi
Practice Manager