Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

The practice warmly welcome Helen Whiteside who is joining us as a Lead Clinical Pharmacist. In Wakefield GPs have entered into an agreement to work more closely together and to pilot new ways of working. One of these projects is the development of a Clinical Pharmacy team linked to GP Federation. Kings Medical Practice is part of  Five Towns Health Federation. The Federation consists of practices in Normanton, Castleford and Knottingley who have common values and have started working closely together. The Federation will have a small Clinical Pharmacy team that Helen will lead. The aim of the Clinical Pharmacy team is to improve the quality of our prescribing and we are very glad to welcome Helen to our team

The Daily Telegraph had a lead article on Saturday about the safety of GP clinical records with the headline 'Security breach fears over 26 million NHS patients' - click here for the full article. In summary the article was saying that for practices that use SystmOne as their clinical software system (like we do) then anyone in the NHS may be able to your records, without your consent if the practice has set the clinical system to automatically share your records. The short answer is that we do not share your records without your consent and will have asked you if you would like to share your records so your computer records are safe! The slightly longer answer is that the computerised clinical record we have is used by lots of GPs and other healthcare providers including the local hospital, district nurses and health visitors. In SystmOne there is a function called Enhanced Data Sharing Model (eDSM) and it allows staff the opportunity to record your explicit consent for s...

Just a quick reminder that if you are planning to go somewhere hot the practice provides a full travel advice service to our patients including travel vaccinations, travel health advice, advice about malaria prophylaxis and Yellow Fever vaccinations. Most travel vaccinations are free - the exceptions are generally if you are going to unusual places or doing something unusual e.g. back packing trips in the wilds or staying somewhere for longer than three months. The commonest vaccinations patients have to pay for are Yellow Fever, Hepatitis B and Rabies vaccinations. You will also have to pay for malaria tablets but the practice does not charge if you need a private prescription for malaria prophylaxis tablets. The practice is a registered Yellow Fever Vaccination centre. We also provide Yellow Fever Vaccinations and Travel Advice to patients who are not registered with the practice. Our travel advice service is run by our nursing team and they would like you to fill in a Pre Travel...

Wakefield CCG has announced the closure of the GP Practice at King Street, Wakefield - click here for the press release. It is easy for  Kings Medical Practice and King Street Health Centre to be confused for the same GP practice - they are not the same and Kings Medical Practice is not closing! The GP Practice at King Street has a time limited contract and it will come to an end in March 2017. At the King Street site there are two services, the GP practice with a registered list and the walk-in-service. The changes will not affect the walk-in-service, which operates under a separate contract and will continue at the present time. But just to be clear Kings Medical Practice is not closing!

Turning Point Talking Therapies wants to encourage people to learn how to help themselves when feeling low, stressed or anxious. To help with this they run free workshops and we are hosting them at Kings Medical Practice over the next few months. The workshops are on the following dates: Emotional Eating Workshop - 16th February, 12.30pm - 2pm Mindfulness and Relaxation - 16th March, 12.30pm - 2pm Improving Your Sleep Workshop - 13th April, 12.30pm - 2pm Managing Workplace Stress Workshop - 13th April, 12.30pm - 2pm Improving Low Mood Seminar - 8th June, 12.30 - 2pm The workshops all take the form of an introduction to self help techniques, some materials to take home to try and advice about how you can access further support and help. You can find more information at  https://talking.turning-point.co.uk/wakefield/workshops/ , or alternatively ring 01924 234860. If you would like to book a place then contact reception on 01924 223909 Option 1. These workshops are open...

Last weekend the government attempted to blame GPs for the current crisis in the NHS. The allegation was that GPs were not seeing enough patients and that they were turning up at A&E departments instead and causing delays and queues in A&E. This is utter tosh! At Kings Medical Practice we are open from 8.00 am to 6.30 pm every day, and offer an additional six hours of extended hours appointments per week; on Saturday mornings, one morning a week between 7 am and 8 am and one evening between 6.30 pm and 8.00 pm. Last week the clinical team saw 2522 patients and the GPs saw 1161 patients. Of those 1161 patients 554 people were seen on the day they requested to be seen - either at our Sit and Wait surgeries or by the Duty Doctor. In the first 12 days of this year, compared to last year the GPs in the practice saw nearly 30% more patients! The truth is that GPs are working hard, we are fully open and seeing more patients then ever before. What Mrs May should have been doing is ...

If you ring for an appointment between 8.00 am and 10.30 am we will offer you a choice of appointments. If you feel you need to be seen on the day we will ask you it if is something the doctor can deal with over the telephone. But if it is something you need to see a doctor in a consultation for, we will offer you the option of coming to our 'Sit and Wait' surgery. When you check in at reception the computer gives you a number and we call people in turn, As an alternative to ringing for an appointment, if you want to be seen in the 'Sit and Wait' surgery just come down to reception between 8.40 am and 10.30 am and register at reception and you will be seen in turn. Routine appointments are still available to book up to six weeks in advance. If your condition requires immediate attention for example chest pain, breathlessness, etc then you will be offered an appointment with the 'on-call' doctor who may wish to speak to you in the first instance to assess...