News – Swallownest Health Centre

Over 65s Flu Jab 15/09/2022

September 15, 2022 March 2, 2023 September

Flu Campaign 2022/23 12/09/2022

September 12, 2022 March 2, 2023 September

Flu Campaign 2022/23

Information about flu vaccine supplies.

People who are most at risk from the complications of flu are recommended to get a flu vaccine every year. This winter it is especially important with flu and coronavirus (COVID-19) both in circulation. Research shows that if you get both at the same time you may be more seriously ill.

Vaccine administering is restricted to patients who are eligible only. Please refer to the Government link here to find out more https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flu-vaccines-for-the-current-season/flu-vaccines-for-the-2022-to-2023-season#eligible-groups

The eligible groups are as follows (in line with Government guidance)

aged 2 and 3 years on 31 August 2022
school aged children (all primary school aged children (reception year to year 6) and eligible secondary school aged children)
those aged 6 months to under 50 years in clinical risk groups
pregnant women
Healthy 50 to 64-year olds (Strict guidance is that this cohort will not be offered this until after 15 October 2022)
all those aged 65 years and over
those in long-stay residential care homes
carers / in receipt of carer’s allowance / or main carer of an older or disabled person
close contacts of immunocompromised individuals
frontline health and social care staff

Why should I have my flu vaccine at my GP? Swallownest Health Centre supports you as our patient, and as such a flu vaccine has already been ordered (in September 2021) for all our registered patients who are eligible to receive one. Therefore, if you fall within any of the eligible categories, we will actually have a vaccine with your name on (so to speak). We have to do this and assure NHS England we have enough vaccines for everyone. We have to buy the vaccines for you and we can only return limited numbers that go unused, and the rest have to paid for by the surgery. Please come to receive your vaccination with us, YOUR local GP surgery, we have bought your vaccine and want to protect you!

We operate as an independent and individual organisation, and therefore are not working in association with any other organisation in offering flu vaccines. We offer a setting where we can check your medical records and documented allergies and make sure you get the most suitable vaccine. We also have medical staff at hand, all of which help with safe administering of your vaccine.

We can offer protection for those who may be forgetful by reducing the risk of duplication in vaccines being administered

We offer a fast, efficient and friendly flu clinic service with your local surgery team (and we really enjoy our drop-in flu clinic sessions, it gives us a nice break from our ‘normal’ work)

We can ensure continuity of care for our patients and carers (we know you already).

How do I make my appointment? We don’t add clinics to our clinical system until our vaccines have been delivered and are in our fridges. At which point we will add and will be sending out text messages where you can click on the link to book an appointment. You don’t need to be signed up to online access to do this. We did last year, and it was a success and also eases any burden on our phone lines. Please note that we will not send text messages to everyone at once. We will do this in stages in line with our clinics available, so please be patient.

Can I make a call or visit the health centre to book an appointment for my flu vaccine? Yes you can, we would recommend that you contact us after 2pm if you need to call to book, as our phone lines are quieter at this time. Please note that appointments will not all be added at once, we will be adding in stages whilst we monitor our stock, staffing and other duties. We will do our best to provide a variety of appointments including early morning and later afternoons to support patient access. We are looking to have 2 weekend dates also.

I have an appointment at the Health Centre for something else, can I have my vaccine whilst I am there? Yes of course if the clinician has the time and if you are eligible. Please check with the clinician.

What will happen when I arrive? Please prepare by removing any coats or jumpers. This will make the process easier and quicker for all.

How is this different to normal? We are conducting our flu clinics the way that we have the last couple of years, as this has worked really well for us and our patients. We will be having 2 weekend dates (TBC) and we will also have a variety of appointments during the day with Healthcare Assistants.

What do I need to do? We would recommend that you wear a face mask to protect any vulnerable patients and staff, ensure you wash your hands before and after, DO NOT attend if you or a close contact have symptoms or have had contact with a suspected/confirmed case of Covid.

What about car parking? To ease the pressure in the car park, if you are able to walk to the centre, we would strongly advise you to.

How long will it take? Appointments are very quick, and you will be asked a couple of questions by the clinician to enable them to know if you are ok to have the vaccine.

Will I just be offered my flu vaccination? We are unable to offer covid vaccinations here, however we can confirm that they are being offered at Anston, amongst many other sites. Appointments for these are available on the National Booking Service https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/ Please note that you are able to have Covid and flu vaccinations on the same day as it is completely safe. We would also be able to offer you the pneumonia vaccine if you are eligible and haven’t already had it. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/pneumococcal-vaccination/

We regularly contact patients with regards to pneumonia and also shingles vaccines. We do not administer shingles vaccines with our flu vaccines.

What do I do after I’ve had my vaccination? Following your vaccine, you should be able to leave immediately.

Not eligible for NHS flu vaccination? Unfortunately, we are not able to give flu vaccinations to patients who are not eligible under the NHS programme. However, you are able to pay get the flu vaccination at a pharmacy.

Housebound patients

We have a team who will be supporting us in our housebound flu vaccines. You do not need to do anything to trigger your flu vaccination. You will be contacted by the team who will be administering these. These will begin in September. Your GP knows which patients are housebound.

Childrens Nasal Flu

Please note that we are shortly be inviting all eligible children for the Nasal Flu, unfortunately we are only allowed to order in stages so have to limit the number of invitations we send out at any one time. Please DO NOT contact the surgery to enquire we will be contacting the parents of Children who are eligible in due course. If your child has received theirs at school or you wish to decline, please let us know so we can offer to another child.

Should you wish to read more regarding facts about flu and the flu vaccine, please copy and paste the link below into your browser https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/flu-influenza-vaccine/

We would like to thank you for your continued co-operation, understanding and support.

Swallownest Health Centre

Monday 19th September – Funeral Plans and Arrangements for Primary Care Bank Holiday

September 11, 2022 March 2, 2023 September

Everyone at Swallownest Health Centre has been deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She was greatly respected and admired by all. Our heartfelt condolences go out to King Charles III and the entire Royal Family.

The government has confirmed that Monday 19^th September will be a bank holiday following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the activation of arrangements relating to her lying in state and subsequent funeral.

With regards to this, please be advised that we will be cancelling all appointments that are currently booked on Monday 19^th September. This will be done via a text message where possible as unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to call everyone booked in individually. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Swallownest Health Centre

September 01/09/2022

September 1, 2022 March 2, 2023 September

Did Not Attend figures for August 2022 01/09/2022

September 1, 2022 March 2, 2023 September

Diabetes Event 23/08/2022

August 23, 2022 March 2, 2023 August

Do you have diabetes, and want to use your experience to shape services?

Whilst there has been some improvement in diabetes care, Rotherham still has worse outcomes and spends more on diabetes care than other areas. We would therefore like to invite you to a Diabetes Summit to consider what we next do in relation to diabetes care.

The summit will take place on Thursday 29^th September 1:30 pm- 5:00 pm at New York Stadium, Rotherham United Football Club, S60 1FJ

Registration is at 1:15 pm, so the event can begin at 1:30 pm, and light refreshments will be provided

The event is open to a variety of staff across all elements of the care pathway, and also to people with diabetes.

Places on the event MUST be booked in advance, to book a place please contact Natasha [email protected].

The agenda is not firm as yet but the draft is as follows:

Opening from Sophie Holden (GP lead for diabetes)/Stuart Lakin (Head of Medicines Management) re. our current outcomes
Regional/national view of diabetes care
Wakefield model – Dinesh Nardy or Ryan D’Costa
Table work (why care is not improving, what works in Super 6, what doesn’t, where should diabetes care be supported)
Next steps

Making Our Practice Greener 03/08/2022

August 3, 2022 March 2, 2023 August

This practice is delighted to be signed up to the Green Impact for Health Toolkit and is actively taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint. The climate emergency is also a health emergency, and health care in the UK contributes 5.4% of the UK’s carbon emissions. We need to enhance the health of our current population without compromising the health of future generations, and this means operating within the sustainable boundaries of the planet. Fortunately most of the solutions for the planet also make our health better – for example eating a mainly plant-based diet, engaging in active travel and exercise in nature, avoiding smoking, reducing pollution etc all enhance our health and reduce our need for medications, with further benefits to the NHS, your health and the carbon footprint of healthcare. Take a look at www.greenerpractice.co.uk

to learn more about this.

There are a number of ways that our patients can help support the sustainability within our Health Centre, and we will be proactive in providing information/advice to support patients with regards to this:-

Reviewing use of inhalers

Did you know that using one type of inhaler produces the same CO2 equivalent as driving a car from London to Sheffield? There are similar inhalers available which have 28 times less CO2 equivalent. Find out more about what we are doing about this.

Inhaler review

One of the biggest areas we have identified for improvement is the type of inhalers we prescribe to our patients for chest problems such as asthma and COPD. Some types of inhaler contain propellants which make a significant contribution towards greenhouse gases and our practice carbon footprint. One type of inhaler has the same carbon dioxide equivalent as that produced driving a car from London to Sheffield. When I looked at our prescribing over the last year, inhalers were responsible for almost 21 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. At the moment, only 27% of the inhalers we give to patients are ‘green’. In Europe, this figure is more like 50% and in Sweden, they are at 87%. Most of the time, the ‘green’ inhalers are the same medicine, but delivered slightly differently, so there should not be much difference for patients. If our practice could achieve the same use of ‘green’ inhalers as Sweden, we would see our CO2 equivalent drop to around 9 tonnes per year.

Our plan is to gradually phase in the ‘green’ inhalers. We will most likely do this at your asthma or COPD check up. This means we can show you how to use the ‘green’ inhalers and make sure that your chest condition remains well controlled. Please do not stop any inhalers as any hospital treatment needed for a flare up will result in far more greenhouse gases than the inhaler!

Things you can do in the meantime to help reduce the impact of inhalers on the planet include stopping smoking and increasing your exercise (which will improve your lungs and reduce the need for inhalers), only ordering inhalers that you need, and bringing any used inhalers back to the practice for disposal (we can make sure the propellants are denatured and therefore reduce their impact on greenhouse gases). Making sure your inhaler technique is correct will make sure that you get the most out of your medicines and Asthma UK have some helpful videos on their website to support this.

Electronic prescriptions

Most prescriptions are now signed, sent and processed electronically.

You have 2 choices for how this works.

You can choose a pharmacy or dispenser to dispense all your prescriptions. When you get a prescription, it will be sent electronically to the dispenser you have chosen. You can collect your medicines or appliances without having to hand in a paper prescription.
You can decide each time you are issued a prescription where you would like it to be dispensed. When you are issued a prescription, you will be given a paper copy that you can take to any pharmacy or other dispenser in England. The paper copy will contain a unique barcode that will be scanned to download your prescription from the secure NHS database.

Paper prescriptions will continue to be available in special circumstances, but almost all prescriptions will be processed electronically.

Choosing a pharmacy or other dispenser

If you get regular prescriptions or are already using a prescription collection service (where a pharmacy collects prescriptions from your GP practice for you) then choosing a pharmacy to dispense all your prescriptions may save you time by avoiding unnecessary trips to your GP.

You will still order your repeat prescriptions in the same way as you do now, but your prescriptions will be sent electronically to the pharmacy or dispenser of your choice.

You will not have to collect a paper repeat prescription from your GP practice.

Cancelling or changing your choice of pharmacist or dispenser

You can change or cancel your choice of dispenser at any time. Simply speak to your GP or pharmacist before you order your next prescription.

You should allow time for the update to take place to avoid your next prescription being sent to the wrong place.

What can I do if I’m unhappy with the process?

You should be provided with information about electronic prescriptions and give your consent before your choice of dispenser is recorded.

If you’re unhappy with your experience, you can complain to the dispenser, your GP practice or your local integrated care board (ICB).

Find out more about the NHS complaints procedure