Welcome everyone to our last newsletter of 2024. There’s definitely a wintery feel in the air, with Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas hot topics of discussion once again!
At Riverside at this time of the year our thoughts turn to how we can provide the best possible care to our patients over the winter months, which are usually the most pressurised time in General Practice. Much of what we’ve been doing over the summer and autumn has been with the intention of setting ourselves up as well as possible for this period … please read on to find out more!
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Welcome to our new team members
Over the autumn we’ve welcomed five new GPs to our team – Dr Samitha Kouser Ajaz, Dr Bernard Kyei, Dr Tom Lyon, Dr Maryam Barma and Dr Lizzie McGeorge – who joined the team on a permanent basis after completing her GP training programme with us.
The GP recruitment market remains tough, so we’re delighted to have these GPs join us and hope it speaks to Riverside becoming known as a good place to work. We know our patients will join us in welcoming all of them to Musselburgh.
We believe the number of GPs we have per patient continues to compare very well against the national average, with a further team of specialist nurses and a paramedic supporting them to provide care to you.
Yasmin, Geraldine, Eilidh and Kelly have also joined our busy Reception and secretarial teams in recent months.
Sign up for online booking
Patients aged 16 years and over can now sign up for Patient Services, which allows you to book certain types of appointments online.
Once you’ve signed up to Patient Services you’ll be able to book advance GP appointments online, along with some types of nurse appointments. You’ll also be able to update the contact details in your patient record and cancel appointments online.
Each day Monday-Friday at 7.45am, a limited number of advance GP appointments for up to a week ahead will be released for online booking.
CWIC appointments and same-day GP appointments will continue to be bookable by calling the Practice from 8am. Some advance GP appointments will be reserved for booking over the phone.
We hope that if patients who are online choose to book appointments via Patient Services, it will help to reduce some pressure from our busy phoneline and therefore also improve access for patients who need (or prefer) to continue booking by telephone.
Please note that while in England patients can use Patient Services to view their medical record, this functionality isn’t available in Scotland. As our patients can already request medications online via our website, we’ve chosen not to use Patient Services for prescription requests.
We’re grateful to our Patient Panel for giving their time to test Patient Services, and have taken on board their feedback.
We welcome further feedback from patients about Patient Services – you’ll be able to find an online survey to complete once you’ve signed up and logged into Patient Services.
Many of you have asked us whether we could use online booking, so we’re delighted to now be able to offer this to patients and will carefully monitor its impact over the coming weeks.
Care for people with long-term conditions
Our specialist nurses provide care to patients with one or more of the following long-term conditions: asthma, chronic kidney disease, COPD, coronary heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), peripheral arterial disease and previous stroke.
People with these conditions are invited by the Practice to have their condition reviewed every 12-24 months, depending on what conditions you have.
Starting from this winter we’ll be introducing some changes to how we review long-term conditions, including asking some patients to first complete an online or hard copy review form with some basic health information and blood pressure readings taken at home.
Alongside any blood test results, this will help our nurses get a more accurate picture of how well your condition is being managed and – in some cases – mean they can invite only those who need to do so to attend a follow-up appointment.
Please wait for a letter or text message inviting you for your long-term conditions review. In the meantime (unless the only long-term condition you have is asthma) then please consider investing in a blood pressure monitor for home use. These can now be bought relatively cheaply in pharmacies and online.
Urgent prescriptions and the emergency GP
We understand that it’s easy to forget to request your medication in good time, every once in a while.
If you do forget; will run out of medication before the timeframes we process normal prescription requests within; and think you can’t manage without your medication then you can request that the emergency GP does an urgent prescription for you.
The Reception team will ask you to put in a normal medication request via our website or your pharmacy (if you haven’t done so already) and then the emergency GP will consider if they can do a 10-day supply of your medication, to tide you over until your full script is available.
We hope that this will both help people out if they’ve forgotten to request their medication, but also encourage people not to use the ‘urgent prescription’ system as the way to get their medication each time they need it – as this puts pressure on the emergency GP, on what can often already be a very busy day!
If people are asking the emergency GP to do an urgent prescription on a very regular basis, we may need to ask them to come to the Practice to make the request, then wait here until the emergency GP has time consider the request.
We unfortunately can’t ask the emergency GP to do an urgent prescription for items which are easily available for a low cost from your pharmacy, for example paracetamol, ibuprofen or hayfever medication. Please do visit your pharmacy to get a supply to tide you over.
Just a reminder of our timeframes for processing medication requests:
- Up to 5 working days for repeat prescriptions + 2 additional days if you collect from a pharmacy
- Up to 10 working days for acute medication requests (medications not on your repeat prescription but which you’ve had in the last 12 months) + 2 additional days if you collect from a pharmacy
Reduced cost membership at local leisure facilities
If you have a diagnosed long-term condition, mental health problem, Parkinsons or cancer and would like to benefit from reduced membership to Enjoy Leisure or Edinburgh Leisure facilities) depending on where you pay your Council Tax) then ask our GPs or nurses about whether they can refer you.
There are a variety of offers available for people with each different condition – for example people with Parkinsons or cancer can be referred for a free 12-week programme of specialised exercise classes.
Under the Enjoy Leisure scheme, trained exercise & wellbeing officers will work with you on an individual basis to find out what you hope to achieve and to build a personalised plan with you.
Winter is a particularly good time to keep active, so ask a GP or nurse about this if you fit the criteria and want to make a positive change!
Your privacy
One of our Patient Panel gave us really useful feedback about there sometimes being a lack of privacy at the Reception desk. We’ve now put new signs in place to encourage people to give the person at the desk some space while they speak to the Receptionist.
However if you feel you’d like to speak to one of our Reception team away from the front desk, please let them know and they’ll be happy to accommodate this.
Feedback corner
We very much appreciate the many messages of thanks that patients often send in for our clinicians and administrative team … here’s one of the nicest from this quarter.
“After being concerned about my mother’s health over the weekend, I called first thing Monday to have her seen by a GP – which happened swiftly. As a result, not only was my mother quickly assessed and put on temporary medication but there were phone call follow ups and an Occupational Therapist assigned – who visited quickly. Four days on from fearing for my mother, I genuinely feel reassured that she is being supported. I wanted to pay tribute to the coordination, communication and rapid response – all instrumental in keeping my mum out of hospital and on the road to recovery. Thank you – none of you have easy jobs! The team did what mattered, when it mattered. In my mother’s case all worked well and was reassuring – and I take my hat off to you all: Reception, the doctors and occupational therapist. Please do share my thanks and congratulations to the team … I wanted to give you some heartfelt positive feedback.”
We also take all complaints very seriously and respond to them in line with the NHS Model Complaints Handling Procedure, using them as an opportunity to learn and improve our services.
In quarter 2 (June-August) we had:
- 4 access complaints, of which 4 were upheld
- 2 clinical complaints, of which 1 was upheld
- 6 service complaints, of which 3 were upheld
Christmas opening hours
Some dates for your diary:
Wednesday 25 December (Christmas Day) and Thursday 26 December (Boxing Day)
Practice closed, re-opening Friday 27 December as normal
Wednesday 1 January (New Year’s Day) and Thursday 2 January
Practice closed, re-opening Friday 3 January as normal
Please go request any medications in very good time before the festive break.