We are the friendly practice, we entered the profession of medicine to look after people and ensure scientific advances are applied appropriately to family medicine. Our practice origins lie at the heart of our community, with our site being the old home of Dr John Galletly and his son, Alistair. We take pride in caring for you and your family when you need us most and spend time ensuring that we care for you when you may not know you need us. Here are a few examples of how we work above and beyond to ensure you are well looked after.

We try to bring together generations by asking our social media followers to help us look out for our frailest and most vulnerable community members – every Christmas we coordinate your generous donations to give presents to our elderly patients who live alone. Our patient participation group deliver these gifts and spread the word about their outreach efforts.

We have a team of professionals dedicated to looking after frail (and often elderly) patients aiming to keep them well and in their place of choice for care. Our practice care coordinators care for patients in our ‘virtual clinic’ and update our team on our most vulnerable patients each month to ensure we all go ‘above and beyond’. Our patient participation group is active and engages with patients and helps to make your experience at our practice better. We always contact bereaved relatives and offer support wherever we can.

Our Facebook page is linked to a carer support group, a sanctuary where carers can discuss their difficulties and support each other.

We ensure that every member of our population is cared for, including the very young, vulnerable and elderly. We train our team to ensure that patients with mental health problems including dementia, learning difficulties and patients with long term conditions are especially safe in our hands. Our appointment system and access means that patients who work are able to see a clinician when they need to.

You will ALWAYS receive help from our team on the day using our telephone triage service and we appreciate how well you have responded to our recently changed system. During difficult times in the NHS we have been able to keep our ratio of patients to clinicians at an effective level, we now have 9 GPs in our team. Last winter the NHS experienced overwhelming pressure on the system. Using our appointment system we worked hard as a team, supported each other and handled these pressures daily, ensuring you all received the help you needed. We even had time to send our GPs out to deliver your medication during the heavy snowfall!

We are aware that our frailest patients need to be cared for effectively, and that this care doesn’t always have to be in a hospital setting. We have an effective relationship with the care homes in our area, the staff have immediate access to a GP daily and are working with our practice care coordinators (a team of highly qualified community nurses) to ensure you and your loved ones are well looked after. Our care coordinators have a “Virtual Ward” of patients who are severely frail and at risk of becoming unwell, we ensure that all of our staff know who these patients are and we go out of our way to ensure that we deliver the best care we can. This innovative project based on the comprehensive geriatric assessment means a lot to us all.

We firmly believe in modern advances in medicine and technologies, we always promote the most effective methods of you being able to seek help or advice. This is why we promote the use of online access to your records. We provide you with a level of service you deserve – we are able to offer minor surgeries and imaging in house.

We regularly seek your input and thank you for your recent responses on our surgery, appointment system and access to services. We will update you on changes as a result of your feedback. Bi-monthly we will post links to feedback websites, such as I Want Great Care and NHS Choices, we enjoy learning how we can do better. Your positive feedback is a real boost to our team too. After visits to our surgery you will receive a text asking the ‘friends and family test’, thank you for responding.

Our multidisciplinary team, including ANPs, clinical pharmacists, care coordinators, social prescribers all use the very best of their skills to help us to help you.

We pride ourselves in being a safe place for you and your family to receive care. We understand that you put an enormous amount of trust in us and never underestimate it.

We have a robust child and adult safeguarding protection protocol in place. Our lead GP meets regularly to discuss vulnerable patients and feeds back to all staff and we are all trained to the highest level. We have a protocol to prompt your clinician to record who attends with a minor during a consultation and always offer a chaperone. We send letters to over 16s inviting them to update their contact information and ensure their safety and confidentiality.

Our prescribing and drug monitoring is incredibly thorough. We monitor our antibiotic use and try to explain to you, using information leaflets, why immediate use of medication may not be the right thing.  We audit the use and monitoring of potentially toxic medication monthly and encourage you to attend for regular review using our “Happy Review” system. We follow up any unplanned admissions with a phone call from a GP the day after discharge and monitor who has been admitted to hospital.

We now have two modern ‘emergency admissions’ rooms, set up with protocols and equipment to help if you are very unwell.  This means we can offer you the very best care whilst we wait for your ambulance.

We discuss any ‘significant events’ monthly and learn how to be better.  This is something we take very seriously and we always try to learn from events.  As a result we have a number of new protocols in place and have adapted how we work.

We changed team’s our working day to ensure that house-keeping staff are on the premises whenever you are, this means that someone is always on hand to prevent falls or clean up spills.

We respond to the need to change. This is why we need your views and regularly ask for them.  Your feedback online and through our PPG is crucial and we appreciate it. Our recent survey responses for 2019 have been incredibly helpful and we are looking at varied methods of you consulting with your clinician as a result.

The NHS has become overwhelmed with increasing demands and we recognised the need to change, to keep you safe and to attract the best clinicians to our team. We think the best thing we’ve done recently is overhaul our appointment system. We love the fact that patients don’t have to wait here to be seen. It means that we are providing a quick service and not leaving people to suffer. Dr Galletly wrote in his memoirs before his death, explaining that he “worked long hours to serve his patients and everyone was seen on the same day, either at home or in his practice”.

We regularly respond to clinical updates and embark on quality improvement projects, changing practice and keeping you informed. Our CCG informs us of how we are working compared to other practices in the area. It is useful information given that we are all working with a similar population of patients. If we are outliers in any area we adapt and change our approach. Examples recently include changing the way we assess for vitamin D deficiency and we believe we are now offering you a higher standard of care as a result of changing our practice.

We hold regular meetings to analyse significant events. It is an unfortunate but infrequent occurrence if things don’t go to plan. The fundamental principle is that responding to problems helps us to learn. We report any problems to higher authorities and sit as a team to discuss how we can learn and improve if things could have been done better or reward each other after things have gone well. Examples of changed practice recently include a new protocol for reviewing letters that come into the practice and setting up a new emergency admissions procedure. Both of these examples have dramatically improved the care you receive.

We support public health campaigns in house and online. We hold regular inter-professional meetings to learn from other healthcare workers.

We recognise that patients with disability need to be able to communicate with us, therefore our team are training to learn Makaton and we are looking at text/email access for patients too.

Being well-led is the key to ensuring you are well looked after. Our experienced managerial team produce a catalogue of practice policies and protocols which are regularly reviewed.  Our intranet system means that guidance is never far away from a team member in the rare event that our managers cannot be contacted in person. Regular staff and team meetings are held and information is filtered down weekly. Our team of managers are friendly and approachable and we listen to our team and take on board any changes for suggestions.

We work closely with our CCG, neighbouring practices and our PPG to learn more about our community.  Our PPG have recently helped us to produce a booklet detailing help available in the community, from carers to social events.

We take staff training very seriously. We all engaged in a vast amount of online training and consolidate this with face to face sessions run by specialists. Examples include resuscitation training, sepsis training, fire training and regular child and adult protection updates. We take some time at least monthly to consider how we can do better, our training meetings ensure that each department has some protected time to learn and improve their trade. We work with our CCG and federation with a named GP attending regular clinical committee meetings ensuring you receive the gold-standard care you deserve.