Category: December

Primary care phlebotomy services are funded for General Practice needs, and those patients being treated under a Shared Care arrangement.

We’ve had an increasing number of patients trying to use our services for Hospital Bloods. Please note that practices aren’t obliged to pick up secondary care phlebotomy as this reduces our capacity to undertake work that we need to do to care for our patients.

Patients should be using the relevant hospital bloods service.

Sheffield Outpatient Phlebotomy and Sheffield Drive though bloods information:

https://www.sth.nhs.uk/services/a-z-of-services?id=282

Rotherham Outpatient Phlebotomy:

https://www.therotherhamft.nhs.uk/Phlebotomy_-_Vascular_Access/Phlebotomy_-_Vascular_Access/

The NHS is under immense pressure at the moment, and we cannot continue to provide safe care and a limitless service in General Practice.

Whilst we have always had days when urgent demand is much higher than the capacity of our Doctors in the last couple of months, demand has exceeded capacity daily.

We plan for safe care. Safe care for us means that the Duty Doctor – whose job it is to manage all of the demand for same day medical appointments – should have up to 40 patients in a day. This is one patient every 15 minutes from 8am to 6.30pm (not allowing for any breaks or all of the other things link signing repeat prescriptions, reviewing test results, writing sick notes etc).

In the last 2 months, rather than this safe number of (40 patients or less) the average has been 78 patients every day. In fact on 6 days there has been over 100 urgent patients for the Urgent GP. This is less that 5 minutes per patient. This is not safe.

So, as we have to ensure we provide a safe service to patients, we need to set a daily limit on how many patients we can book for urgent appointments.

From now on, if the number of calls we get are unsafe, we will ask patients to contact other parts of the NHS whose role it is to provide urgent help. We will advertise this on our website and on the phone line.

Please do consider other services available to our patients. Our Patient Services Advisors have been asked to ask questions regarding your symptoms so that they can care navigate you to the most appropriate clinician first time.

•  www.nhs.uk, pharmacies and 111 for minor illness and how to manage this at home. A huge amount of the extra demand we have had in recent weeks is patients calling in the first few days of minor illness, which actually, most of the time, can be treated successfully at home until the normal period of symptoms passes. For example it is normal for a cough and cold to last for three weeks. All of these calls for these self-limiting symptoms means that we can’t provide a safe service to the patients who do develop more severe symptoms or have serious medically urgent problems
• Making sure you order your repeat medications with plenty of time before your current supply runs out. And that you do the same if you need a repeat sick note

Hopefully if all our patients use our urgent capacity responsibly, it will mean we can get to all our patients with serious medically urgent problems. However, if we do not feel that we can provide our patients with safe medical care, we will ask patients to contact other services who can help. This may be pharmacies, 111, nhs.uk, in some cases 999 or A&E.

Please support us in this change to ensure that we can be there for you when you need us.

We have made the decision to relocate our prescription post box to upstairs in our waiting area. We know that this decision won’t be popular with all our patients, however we have done this for the following valid reasons:-

• Patient safety with regards to GDPR. The front of the building was recently vandalised and therefore by moving it, we are protecting confidential patient information we have.
• We have monitored the time it is taking our staff to collect prescriptions several times a day, and unfortunately, we are unable to spare this time. Our workload is prioritised to answer the telephones and provide service to the reception desk wherever possible.
• As a practice, we are fully committed to the sustainability and reduction of our carbon footprint. We have signed up to being a ‘Greener Practice’ and will continue to work with both our staff and patients to improve our carbon footprint. We would encourage patients to sign up to online access wherever possible. https://swallownesthealthcentre.co.uk/prescriptions-2/  

Scarlet fever - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

The latest data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that scarlet fever cases continue to remain higher than we would typically see at this time of year. The full press release statement can be read here:

UKHSA update on scarlet fever and invasive Group A strep - UKHSA update on scarlet fever and invasive Group A strep - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

There are lots of viruses that cause sore throats, colds and coughs circulating. These should resolve without medical intervention. However, children can on occasion develop a bacterial infection on top of a virus and that can make them more unwell.

As a parent, if you feel that your child seems seriously unwell, you should trust your own judgement. Contact NHS 111 or your GP if:

your child is getting worse
your child is feeding or eating much less than normal
your child has had a dry nappy for 12 hours or more or shows other signs of dehydration
your baby is under 3 months and has a temperature of 38°C, or is older than 3 months and has a temperature of 39°C or higher
your baby feels hotter than usual when you touch their back or chest, or feels sweaty
your child is very tired or irritable

Call 999 or go to A&E if:

your child is having difficulty breathing – you may notice grunting noises or their tummy sucking under their ribs
there are pauses when your child breathes
your child’s skin, tongue or lips are blue
your child is floppy and will not wake up or stay awake

Welcome to GOV.UK

GOV.UK - The place to find government services and information - simpler, clearer, faster.

DECEMBER

Bowel Cancer Awareness Month

www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk

1^st December, World Aids Day

www.worldaidsday.org

1^st-7^th December, Anger Awareness Week

www.healthassured.org