A Time for Good Intentions?

Morning all,

This seems to be the time of year when people decided to have good intentions for the New Year. Seems familiar?

Our good intentions are to continue to provide the best medical care we are able to provide to our patients. We may not always get it right, but we certainly try to do so.

Do you have any good intentions for this coming year?

We thought we would get you on your way with some good intentions and how to get about achieving them. The most common ones we hear off are the following:

Stop smoking

There are many ways in which you could achieve this. Some people wish to do it on their own, either through gradually reducing the amount they smoke, going 'cold turkey', or using some nicotine replacement therapies.

If you require any help, try one of the following:

• see us to place yourself on the waiting list for our smoking cessation clinic.
• contact Doncaster Smoke Free on 01302 640064 or click on the image below to go to their website.

Loose weight, become more active, get healthier

Why not contact Change4Life to achieve this or see us for some help? You can reach Change4Life on their website, where they also have links to free apps and activities near you. Just click on the image below to go to their website.

Stop drinking or stop doing drugs

We have 2 great services in Doncaster to help you achieve this goal. Just click on the images below to go to their websites for more details.

Telephone: 01302 730956

(drugs and alcohol)

01302 571260 

And a few little pointers to being successful:

• Never give up on yourself!
• Praise yourself for little achievements!
• Set yourself only achievable goals!
• Positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement!
• If you have a little fall back, don't see it as being a failure, but as a little hurdle to overcome, that was your last cigarette, your last drink, your last binge eating session. You really enjoyed it, but now you are back on track to achieving your goal.

All that rests us now is to say

Good Luck! If you really want to, you have a good chance of achieving your goal.

We would also like to wish you all a Very Happy, Healthy and Successful 2014!

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2014 to all!

All at White House Farm Medical Centre would like to wish you all a

Very Merry Christmas

and a Very

Happy and Healthy

2014!

on behalf of all at White House Farm Medical Centre,

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

What is happening at the surgery? Flu Season is coming!

Evening all,

It has been a while since I've posted on here. I however thought it would be a good idea to forewarn everyone that the Flu season is just around the corner. This means that in the near future there will be flu clinics running at our practice again. They will be starting in October, so keep your eyes peeled if you are in the eligible categories to have a flu jab. New this year will also be the vaccinations against shingles. The Department of Health has decided that this year people who are 70 or 79 years old are eligible for this new shingles vaccination. This can potentially be given at the same time as the flu jab.

More details will be coming out soon and you will also be able to find this information on our website at www.whitehousefarmmedical.nhs.uk.

Don't miss out on your flu jab this year if you are in one of the eligible categories.

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

What is happening at the surgery? Order your prescriptions on line, book or cancel appointments online.

Afternoon,

There are some more changes afoot at our practice this week. We hope these changes will be for the better, rather than just another change for change sake, but we are very hopeful they will improve access for our patients and improve our work life perhaps as well.

So, what is about to happen?

This week our website will be enabled to give access to our patients to:

• Order their repeat prescriptions online
• Book an appointment online
• Cancel an appointment online
• Register as a patient at our practice.

Our practice uses SystmOnline for these services. This will link in directly with our computer system to make this possible. You can see a screenshot of this below. (to see a larger image, please click on the image)

 

 

To be able to use this system, you will need to request a username and password from the practice. Once you are issued with your username and password, by the way you will need one for each member of your family if you wish to use this system for your family, you will be able to access it a short time after (about an hour later).

 

Ordering Repeat Prescriptions

 

In order to request your repeat prescriptions, please scroll down to the bottom of our website page, where you will find the following:

 

 

 

Click on the 'OrderYour Repeat Prescription' tab and it will take you to the logging on screen for SystmOnline. Log on using your username and password issued by the practice and you will be able to choose whether you wish to order a prescription, book an appointment or cancel an appointment .

 

When choosing to order your prescription, this should give you a list of the medication on your medical record, which has been marked for repeat prescribing.

Tick the ones you require and complete the order.

 

Not all medication you have previously been issued with may be marked for repeat prescribing. Sometimes medication has been used as a trial, for a course only or for occasional use. We call these 'acute' prescriptions and they may not be able to be requested online, but may need to be requested directly from the surgery instead. Bear in mind that we do not accept prescription requests over the phone.

 

This will lead to a message being sent to our computer system that you have requested your medication and we will then process this request as appropriate. Unless there are any problems with your request (eg a medication review is required before any further prescription for this item can be issued), you will then be able to collect the prescription form from the surgery within 3 working days.

 

Book an appointment online

 

We have also arranged for some of our appointments to be available for online booking. Just like all our appointments this will only be possible up to a maximum of 10 days in advance for some appointments, other appointments are only available for 'On The Day' booking. However, you do have the opportunity to even book an appointment at the times that our surgery is closed (weekend, night time), hopefully giving you better access to our services.

 

You will again need to register for online services by requesting an username and password from the practice and you will then be set up to access this service as well.

 

On accessing the appointment booking service, you will be able to choose the appointments with the doctor/nurse of choice, if this is available at the time.

 

Please bear the following simple rules in mind when booking an appointment:

 

• One appointment only allows for one patient to be seen, book one appointment per patient.
• One appointment only generally allows for one problem to be dealt with appropriately, please book one appointment per problem.
• If you are aware that your particular problem needs more than just 10 minutes to deal with, please book a double (2 consecutive) appointment.

This is not to cause you any trouble, but to make sure that we can give your problems the attention they need as well as trying to ensure that waiting times in the surgery are kept down to a minimum.

 

Cancel an appointment online

 

Made an appointment, but you can't make it after all? Please cancel your appointment, so the slot can be used by another patient in need of an appointment.

 

You will now also be able to do this online, we are however not sure yet, whether this is only possible for those appointments that have been booked online or also for appointments made in different ways. We hope it will be possible for all appointments booked.

 

Of course it will still be possible to ring us to cancel as well.

 

Register as a patient at our practice online

 

It is also possible to register as a patient with our practice online. It is important to realise that registering through this service does not automatically mean that you are accepted as a patient at our practice. This still relies on the following:

• Bringing in the registration form to the practice to be processed (you can fill this in and print this off from SystmOnline and sign it, then hand it in at our reception desk)
• The practice accepting you as a patient. This depends on whether you live within our practice area. We only accept patients who live within our designated practice area.

So, we feel there are some exciting times to come with some great changes that we hope will benefit our patients.

 

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

 

Our Website is now live!

We would like to let you know that our website is now live. You can find the White House Farm Medical Centre Website by clicking on the link in our side banner or by clicking on our name.

A word of caution though, our website is still under development and we will continue to add different sections to it as time goes by. You will now already be able to get some general information regarding opening times, clinics, our team, etc on the website.

Here are a few of the things we aim to add in the future:

• A link to allow you to book or cancel an appointment online (this will not be possible for all appointments and clinics, but only for a selected number of appointments and clinics. Prior registration for this service is required)
• A link to allow you to order your repeat prescriptions online. We currently have our repeat prescriptions online service through Doncaster NHS, but we aim to do this via SystemOnline on our website in future. This service links directly with our computer system leading to a more streamlined service for you and us.
• We are considering adding online registrations to our website as well.

So, do have a look around our website, we hope you will find it helpful and are grateful for any feedback and any suggestions for further improvement you may have.

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

What is happening at the surgery? Dr Bhaskar will be leaving.

Morning to you all!

It is time for another little feature on this blog: 'What is happening at the surgery?'.

This feature aims to keep you up to date on things that are changing at the surgery and this week there is something on our diary of significance.

Dr Bhaskar, who joined our practice in May 2012 as you may know, has decided to leave us at the end of this week for pastures new. No, there has not been a fall out of any kind, she has decided she wishes for a better climate and will be emigrating to Australia in the near future.

This is a great adventure for Dr Bhaskar and her family and we all wish her all the best for the future. We hope she will have a long and happy future there with her family.

For our surgery this obviously means that we will be one doctor down for the foreseeable future. We aim to get a new doctor in post as soon as possible and are actively seeking a new doctor to join our team. We hope to have one in place in the near future, but are aware this may take a little while to materialise. In the interim we will aim to keep the effects of this change down to a minimum and we will be employing some locums over the next few months to ensure the best possible patient care and a continued access to our services. We will try to keep you up to date with any further changes when they are due to happen.

I hope you will join us all in wishing Dr Bhaskar and her family all the best for their future.

Dr J.E.C. Bennekers

Overheard in the Waiting Room, I can never get an appointment!

Evening all,

Time for another post in our series of 'Overheard in the Waiting Room'. Another grumble we overhear on a regular basis. One we unfortunately do not have an appropriate solution for, although we would love to have one. I feel that a lot of the dissatisfaction with the appointment system stems from a misunderstanding in how our appointment system works. I do not believe there is any 'perfect' appointment system and if you believe otherwise or have any suggestions to what a perfect appointment system would be, we are always open to suggestions. No promises that we will take them up, but we will certainly look at your suggestions and take them into consideration.

So, how does our appointment system work?

There are a few different appointments on our computer system.

• Prebookable appointments. These can be booked into up to 2 weeks in advance. However, there are only 5 of these appointments available per doctor per session. These obviously get allocated quite quickly.
• Book on the day appointments. These are only available for booking on the same day as the appointment and are the remaining appointments in the sessions for the doctors.
• Clinic appointments, these get allocated as appropriate for that particular clinic, some are only prebookable.
• Telephone appointments. These appointments are only available for the Duty Doctor of the day and only are available on the day and for 'emergencies'. This means that if no appointments are available and you deem your problem to be urgent for that day your details will be taken by the receptionist and passed on to the Duty Doctor of the day. The doctor will then assess and triage the problem and ensure that the problem is dealt with as appropriate. This can be done by phoning you back, passing on a message or advice via our receptionists, offer an appointment or in any other way which is felt to be appropriate for your problem.

In other words, if no appointment is available to prebook at a time that seems acceptable to you, there are some other options open to you.

1. You could make a prebookable appointment, but still try to get an earlier appointment by ringing to check for any available 'Book on the Day' appointments. If an earlier appointment became available, you would then cancel the prebooked apppointment.
2. If you feel your problem is too urgent to wait for a prebookable appointment or a Book on the Day appointment on a later day, you could request for a 'Ring Back' or telephone consultation with a doctor.

Alternatively you could also book an appointment with our nurse in Minor Illness Clinic, see a pharmacist in their Minor Illness Clinic or attend the 8-8 centre in town.

Remember the A+E department is only for Accidents and Emergencies, they do not deal with any ongoing problems or problems that could be dealt with by your GP. Except for that, the waiting times at A+E are often quite substantial as well (partially due to inappropriate attendances we are told) and speaking to your GP practice could potentially give you a faster response. Did you realise that a lot of patients attending casualty, do not stay to wait to be seen due to the waiting times, but the NHS still gets charged for this as though these patients were actually seen? I believe this is currently being looked into, but if we all work together, we could avoid unnecessary attendances, waiting times and expenses by only attending A+E when this is appropriate.

If you are uncertain about whether it is appropriate for you to attend casualty, you could always contact your GP, Out of Hours service or the new NHS 111 service for advice on this.

I hope this helps to clarify things a little better with regards to our appointment system. Unfortunately we will never be able to make it work for everyone. If anyone has any great ideas on how it can be improved, I'm always happy to listen to your ideas.

Overheard in the waiting room: Those nosy receptionists, it's none of their business.

Here is the first in this series of posts 'Overheard in the Waiting Room'.

One of the things we hear our patients complain/grumble about is the fact that our receptionists ask our patients what they would like to see the doctor about. The remarks we get on occasion are:

• It's none of their business.
• It's private between the doctor and myself.
• They have no right to ask me that.
• Who does she think she is?

I would like to explain why we have told our receptionists to ask this question.

1. It helps the doctor when seeing the patient to know what the patient wishes to see them about.
2. It allows our receptionists to direct the patient to the best professional to deal with their problem. (for instance certain complaints can be dealt with by the nurse better and other complaints are best dealt with by a specific doctor).
3. It allows our receptionists to help patients to make the right kind of appointment (some complaints need more than one appointment as they take longer to deal with).
4. It on occasion has helped receptionists to prioritise certain complaints (acute chest pain for instance should be assessed by a doctor as soon as possible rather than be given a routine appointment in a week's time).
5. On occasion even a doctor will get ill. The other doctors will then have to share that doctor's work between them (including the already booked appointments for that doctor). Knowing what a patient is coming to see the doctor for, allows us to prioritise which patients definitely need to be seen the same day and which could possibly be rescheduled over the next days or could be dealt with over the phone instead.

Please bear in mind that our receptionists are bound by the same code of confidentiality as the doctors and nurses are. These details will not be shared with any other person than the doctor or nurse and are only used to help the patient to our best ability.

You also have the right to state that your problem is a personal problem if you do not wish to divulge any details. It would however be very helpful if in that case you could let the receptionist know if you feel your problem can be dealt with within one appointment or whether you feel a double appointment would be more appropriate. Our standard appointment slots are scheduled for 10 minutes each with a doctor, although certain clinic appointments are scheduled for a longer period of time (15 or 20 minutes).

Please also bear in mind that we have a nurse led 'Minor Illness' clinic on most days. This clinic is appropriate for people with an acute minor illness (cough, cold, earache, sore throat, and some other minor problems). This clinic is run while there is a duty doctor available on the premisis, whose opinion can be asked for if she feels this is needed. She is able to generate a prescription for the minor complaint if this is appropriate and this prescription will then be passed to the duty doctor to be signed. This means that in certain cases it would be possible for you to be seen sooner for your problem than when you would have had to wait for a routine available appointment with a doctor.

I hope this post has been able to clarify why we ask our receptionists to ask what you would like to see the doctor about. She is not being nosy, but just following our instructions to place us in the best possible position to help you. For instance, certain doctors do not deal with specific problems. Would you prefer to see a doctor who is able to deal with your problem, or would you like to first see one doctor to then be referred to another doctor within the practice and attend the surgery twice for the same problem? I know what I would prefer in that situation. Most of our patients have quite busy lives and would like not to have to come back twice if it can be dealt with in one consultation.