Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

Dr Sarah Renga is one of our training doctors and has been with us since February. She qualified in 2006 and is in her second year of specialist training to become a GP. Inorder to work as a GP training doctors have to pass the MRCGP exam - Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners. The exam consists of three parts firstly an Applied Knowledge Test (an MCQ paper), secondly a simulated surgery where our trainees see 13 patients at 10 minute intervals in exam conditions and thirdly a completed portfolio of learning. Sarah finishes her training in July 2011 and sat the AKT test in March. She got the result this week and found out she had passed. Passing the AKT shows that Sarah knows her 'stuff'. She has got the knowledge of what to do, the challenge for her, and other trainees, is to apply it in real life to real patients. So, well done Sarah and good luck with the other parts of the exam.

In the post last week at home was an invitation from Life Line Screening to have a ‘Stroke/Carotid Artery’ screen to prevent a stroke from happening. There is a session at Wrenthorpe Methodist Church Hall in June and for the princely sum of £45 they will scan my carotid arteries. Trying to be an evidence based doctor I looked at the UK National Screening Committees website. They have recently mailed GPs about private screening like this and Steven Laitner, a GP and Consultant in Public Health Medicine, comments on the website "There has been a notable increase in the number of patients being offered private screening tests. All screening involves a careful balancing of risks and benefits and where screening falls outside of established criteria it can pose a significant risk to health. GPs provide valuable advice and support to patients in this area and I hope that this new guidance will help them in supporting their patients to make fully informed screening decisions." Bu

As I look out of my window today the sun is shining, summer is almost upon us and of course the hay fever season is about to start. For intermittent or mild symptoms we would recommend non sedating anti histamines like loratadine or cetirizine. At the weekend I was in Sainsbury’s doing our weekly shop and I was surprised at how cheap they are. In Sainsbury’s on Saturday 14 loratadine cost £1. This compares to an NHS prescription charge of £7.20. At Lloyds pharmacy they charge £6.69 for 30 loratadine tablets. I have searched the internet and the Money Saving Expert website has this very useful table that lists the costs of branded and generic anti-histamines. Branded drugs have a trade name and manufactured by well established drugs companies. Brand names are usually simpler than the generic name e.g. Clarityn, Zirtek. Generic drugs are the bioequivalent of a branded drug and the generic name is the actual chemical name of the drug. In the practice we usually prescribe drugs by the

Well, ... the short answer is that we have six patient parking spaces and that if you can’t find a space then they are being used! The slightly longer answer is that Kings Medical Centre has 28 parking spaces plus five disabled spaces. Nineteen of these (plus three disabled parking spaces) are allocated to the doctors’ surgery and the remaining nine spaces (plus 2 disabled parking spaces) to the dental practice and for PCT staff. Currently parking is a bit of a mess with staff cars parking in disabled spaces and also double parking. The double parking makes the car park dangerous for users – it restricts visibility and makes manoeuvring in the car park much more difficult. The parking of staff cars in disabled spaces is particularly irritating. Disabled access to the surgery is very easy as patients can park in the disabled spaces and get access to reception from the lift that can be accessed from the car park. Patients with mobility problems have only a short distance to get into the

On Wednesday the practice closed in the afternoon for staff training and development. We spent the time looking at Significant Events. We define Significant Events as where something did or may have led to some significant harm happening to a patient (usually) or member of staff. The whole practice was involved; doctors, nurses and administration staff. We split into small groups and worked through a proforma looking at the event and then produced an action plan. The Significant Event proforma looks at what happened, what issues did it raise, what was done well, what was not done well, what could be done differently in the future and what learning needs did it identify. The action plan each group was charged with producing looked at what we need to do differently, who is going to be responsible for implementing this change, when are we going to start and how are we going to measure any changes. We looked at five significant events; patients being sent letters about pathology results un