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Orchard Surgery
Newsletter August 2024
New phone system
Over the last few months we have been acutely aware that there have been a number ofissues with our phones. We have listened to you and have done something about this. Wewill be installing a new phone system on the 8th and 9th of August. We are hoping that thiswill improve the patient access and service. The new phones will enable a call back system,a call waiting system, and we will be able to monitor the volume of calls coming in.
Please bear with us on the day of installation – the 8th and 9th of August. You should beable to get through as normal, but there may inevitable be some hick ups
GP’s are on your side!
I am sure that you, as patients, are very aware of the pressures that primary care now find themselves in. This is mainly due to the continued underfunding of the NHS.
Orchard Surgery is no exception in this and we find ourselves under considerably more pressure than ever before.
Flu Clinic Dates
Whilst we are in the middle of summer, and we hope you will have a lovely summer, it is never too early to start to think about the Flu season. We have just announced 2 Flu Saturdays which are the 12th
October and the 26th October. For those of you that are eligible, you will be contacted nearer the time with instructions on how to book an appointment. There will also be a number of evening sessions,
details of which are yet to be confirmed. Covid vaccinations will also be available on those days
Patient Participation Group
We are very keen at Orchard Surgery to keep in touch with our patients, to find out where we can make improvements to our services, and how we can support our patients better.
In order to facilitate this, the Practice Manager has set up a Patient Participation Group (PPG), the first meeting took place on the 16th April at the Melbourn Hub. We started off slowly with 2 volunteers, and are looking for new members. The next PPG meeting will be held in September – please keep an eye out for the date.
The PPG is set up to hear your views in general, it will not be used as a forum to discuss individual needs, but more to look at how we can support and improve our services to Melbourn and the surrounding areas.
More about the PPG and how to join
Pharmacy support
Some of you may have noticed that we have recently welcomed two new pharmacist (Cathy Chin & Zaheer Abbas) and two new pharmacy technicians to the team (Sukey Kaur & Taiba Khan). They are helping us with things such as telephone medication reviews, medication queries and dealing with discharge and hospital letters requiring changes to repeat medications. Our two clinical pharmacists can also advise about long terms conditions management (examples include: blood pressure, cholesterol, thyroid disease, anxiety and depression) and we recommend you book in with them. Most of the appointments are telephone consultations, although pharmacist Cathy Chin works mainly in the surgery and completes face to face appointments. I am sure you will find them an asset to Orchard Surgery.
UK22 swim challenge: Well done Dr Rodgers
Dr Caroline Rodgers has recently completed the Diabetes UK Swim22 challenge which involved swimming 22 miles in just over 10 weeks. She raised £460 for Diabetes UK. Dr Rodgers hopes this this will inspire patients to improve their health by getting active.
Published: Aug 2, 2024