GP and Staff Training afternoons:

Our next training afternoons will be on Thursday 2nd April and Wednesday 6th May. The practice will be open for patients to come in to collect/drop off prescriptions and book appointments/make enquiries at reception. However, there will be no clinical staff on site and our telephone lines will be switched over to the out of hours' service on these afternoons to allow for staff training. Please ring 111 for advice if your query cannot wait until the following day. In an emergency, dial 999.

Change of staff and hours:

We are delighted to advise that two new members of staff will be joining our clinical team from 1st April 2020. Kate Whiting and Emma May will be our new Clinical Care Practitioners and will be seeing patients in the practice as well as covering the majority of the home visits. They are both known to many of our patients as Kate has been our practice paramedic for the past 9 months and Emma was formerly a district nurse covering the peninsula.

We have tried to recruit a GP but have been unable to do so and we have had to look at alternative options to embrace the new ways of working encouraged by NHS England. Kate and Emma will be working alongside our GPs to provide appointments for a variety of Minor Illness conditions, similar to what a nurse practitioner would do in other practices. Our receptionists will be asking why you need to attend the practice, so please help them to direct you to the correct person first time by giving as much information as needed.

In order that the new Clinical Care Practitioners have support and guidance from our GPs, we have had to move our clinics between our two sites. This will mean that from 14th April 2020, on a Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon Holbrook will now shut at 5.00pm and Shotley will remain open until 6.30pm.

There will be no afternoon GP appointments at Holbrook during the week other than emergency appointments on Friday afternoon. We know this may inconvenience some of our patients, as they will need to travel to Shotley to be seen, for which we apologise. However, we are now facing the same problems experienced nationally with GP recruitment and are working with the resources available to us. The number of available appointments will remain the same overall.

We are working with the Peninsula Patient Network to minimise the impact on patients and would welcome your feedback.

Our primary aim is to continue to provide the high standard of service that we currently give so please bear with us whilst we get used to our new ways of working.