For surgeries, please see your own GP's timetable:
- Timetable - Drs. Palacin & Guyler
- Timetable - Dr Navin Kumar & Dr Asha Sinha
Appointment update (12/04/21)
At Dr Kumar’s and Dr Sinha’s Practice even during lockdown 1 last summer our doors remained unlocked although along with Government and NHS England’s guidelines we advised patients not to make uninvited trips to the Health Centre. Clinicians were still seeing some patients deemed clinically necessary and after COVID symptom checks were carried out. As the lockdown eased the number of F2F appointments available were increased in response to demand but always in line with the current guidelines and with patient safety at the forefront. As we are now all taking steps to return to “normality” practices our own included are adapting their systems and processes again.
Our appointments system will remain a care navigation process whereby the receptionist and the patient briefly discuss the nature of the appointment in order to endeavour to book the most appropriate appointment for the patients need. All reception team have undergone care navigation training and are there to help you access the appropriate appointment for you.
Available appointments are a mixture of telephone consultations, video calls and face to face in surgery. Other than with the GP these appointments may be with other more appropriate members of the primary health care team, eg: the clinical pharmacist; advanced clinical practitioner (ACP); nurse practitioner (NP); social prescriber; practice nurse; health care assistant. In a normal working week each day at least one GP is conducting F2F appointments, usually more, these are normally pre-arranged, not only to ensure that they are necessary and by agreement with the GP and patient but also because we have a duty of care to keep all our patients and team safe and as such must keep numbers in the waiting room to a safe level and adhere to social distancing at all times. We understand that there are always exceptions to the rule and we will continue as always to try and accommodate special cases but please understand that every patient request for an appointment does not always necessitate a F2F appointment with a GP: We also offer a nurse practitioner diagnostic and consultation surgery currently on three mornings a week and if a GP appointment is required following speaking with the NP it is arranged.
We know there’s been a lot of discussion in the media recently about GPs providing face-to face-appointments. We wanted to reassure patients that NHS Digital have confirmed that in July over 50% of the 22.8 million appointments carried out were in fact face to face. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-inf...al/appointments-in-general-practice/july-2020
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve remained open to patients. We’ve offered appointments using new ways of working and new technology. We’ve worked hard to make sure we’ve remained available to speak to, and to offer appointments to anyone who’s needed them.
We know that patients sometimes prefer to see a GP face to face, but there are reasons why we’ve offered additional online or telephone consultations, and government guidance has played a big part in this. It’s remained the case that if we’ve needed to see a patient face to face, or felt it was important for their care, we’ve asked those patients to come in to see us.
Offering new ways of working has helped some patients to access appointments who wouldn’t normally be able to due to other commitments, such as their work or caring responsibilities.
The cleaning required between patients during the pandemic means that if all patients were to come into the surgery, we wouldn’t be able to offer the same number of appointments because of the amount of time that cleaning between each patient takes. However, we’ll always see patients face to face who need to be seen face to face.
Changing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) between each patient adds additional time to the end of each appointment. The difficulty in obtaining PPE has also meant that we’ve needed to be more cautious than normal about the way we use scare resources. We continue to work hard daily to source the PPE we need.
We understand that some patients are reluctant to come and see us in the surgery as they’re worried. We’re making sure that social distancing is as good as it possibly can be and that we maintain a ‘COVID-secure’ environment. Some of the things we take into account when we’re considering this are: the number of people in the waiting room, the number of people who pass each other in the corridors, and the toilet facilities that are available.
Our staff are people too, and some may have ethnicity or health issues that make them more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. As caring employers, we need to ensure that we keep our staff safe as well. We take the necessary precautions to keep both our staff and our patients safe.
We have many elderly and vulnerable patients with health conditions that make them more vulnerable to coronavirus than most. We also know that there are young and healthy people who have been seriously affected by COVID-19, so it isn’t just the elderly or infirm we need to protect.
Increasing the number of patients in the surgery would mean that we’d increase the risk for everyone – particularly if some of those people had symptoms of COVID-19 and were unwell enough to need to be seen. For this reason, we’ll keep a balance of the types of appointments we have available. Offering fewer face-to-face appointments keeps patients safe and provides the maximum number of appointments we can.
We're available to talk to, and we always want to hear from patients who need us. While we understandpatients' frustrations with the current situation, we hope you will continue to help and support us,as you've always supported the NHS, so that we can go on providing you with care and support.