Our Team

Cleaners Required at Brookside Health Centre, Freshwater

Brookside Health Centre in Freshwater is looking to build a bank of dedicated cleaners for the Practice.

Part time / flexible working hours would fall between 6pm and 9pm Monday to Friday, with ad hoc hours being needed on Saturdays. Additional flexibility to cover holiday and sickness would also be needed.

Responsibilities include ensuring extremely high standards of cleaning are met throughout the practice, in offices, clinical rooms, toilets, visitor and staff areas.

Experience in a clinical setting is desirable, although not essential and knowledge of COSHH regulations is an advantage.

Equipment and cleaning products provided.

For more information and to apply please send a copy of your CV to: viv.punter2@nhs.net

General Practice across the UK has had to make a lot of changes in recent years, especially as it has become more and more difficult to recruit new GPs. Like many other practices, we have had to look outside the box and broaden our clinical team beyond just Doctors and Practice Nurses.

We now have a top clinical team of General Practitioners (GPs), Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs), Nurse Consultant (NC), Practice Nurses (PNs), Health Care Assistants (HCAs), a Pharmacist and an Advanced Musculoskeletal Practitioner.

We have had to take a step back and look at the huge amount of work previously only carried out by GPs and ask the question ‘What could be done by a different clinician?’ The answer is that a great deal can be done by other clinicians.

The ANPs are very highly qualified in advanced general practice (now with a minimum of 5 years clinical training) and many have additional qualifications in specialist areas. This means that they are more than capable of dealing with the vast majority of minor ailments and complaints, as well as long term condition support and care. This means that the GPs’ workload can be reduced so that they can focus on those matters which really need to be seen by a GP. We understand that many people have only ever been treated locally by a GP and that the changes we have had to make have been difficult to accept. However, many patients also recognise that things do have to change and have been very pleased with the support, care and treatment they have been receiving from our ANPs.

ANPs have been introduced across the country and not just in General Practice. Many Emergency Departments now employ ANPs (including St Mary’s), and you are most likely to be seen by an ANP instead of a Doctor if you have to attend.

Our ANPs are able to prescribe medication and treatments, and are able to refer to the secondary care departments in just the same way as our GPs can. If you are offered an appointment with an ANP this is because we know that they will be able to help you. If the ANP who sees you feels that they would like a GP to also see you they will be able to arrange this during your appointment – we have a Duty GP each day who is available to support the ANPs.

Information about our Nurse Consultant, the HCAs, and our Pharmacist can be found below:

Doctors
Dr Mark Williams

Nurse Consultant
Di Goring
Di is a highly trained and skilled clinician. Her primary focus is on supporting our older patients with their care needs, providing full clinical support for patients with long term conditions, dementia, home visits etc.

Di Goring

Di is a highly trained and skilled clinician.  Her primary focus is on supporting our older patients with their care needs, providing full clinical support for patients with long term conditions, dementia, home visits etc.

Sonya Allen

Katrina Fry

Our Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) are specially trained and highly qualified in assessment, diagnosis and treatment including prescribing, if necessary, for a wide range of common minor illnesses and injuries.

They are qualified to handle the majority of minor and common medical problems and most of our same day urgent appointment requests go to them.  They have a number of pre-bookable appointments each week in addition to same day urgent matters.

The practice nurse team is available by appointment at Brookside Health Centre, Monday to Friday 9.00am – 1.00pm and 2.00 – 5.30pm through a series of regular clinics.

Our nurse-led clinics include asthma, COPD, diabetes, routine vaccinations, dressings, ear syringing, Coronary heart disease, administration of Warfarin and steroids, family planning and travel vaccines.

We have a team of health care assistants (HCAs) in the practice, who also have regular clinics including blood pressure checks and over 75s health checks.  They also assist with minor operations and provide a chaperone service as required.  The HCAs also manage the 24-hour BP monitoring, ECGs, and process urine test results.

We have a part time pharmacist in the practice who undertakes medication reviews with patients.  If you need to discuss your medication, particularly if you are taking several different medicines, you can make an appointment to see the pharmacist.

The MSK Practitioner is able to deal with a large variety of aches and pains, and can also prescribe medication as well as administer steroid injections.

Carina Eccles and Vivienne Punter are the Practice Managers, they both have slightly different roles but they are both responsible for the administration of the practice. Both Carina and Viv would be happy to hear your views and suggestions about the services offered by the practice.

Patient Co-ordinators have an important role in patient communication and liaison; they do a lot more than meet and greet, or book appointments.  They can support on navigating your way around the NHS or community services, appointment and home visit requests, sick note requests, enquiries about results and new patient and on–line registrations.

The Doctors and other clinicians have instructed the Patient Co-ordinators to ask patients for a brief reason why they need to be seen, have a home visit, or request a telephone consultation. 

The Patient Co-ordinators have been trained to ask certain questions in order to:

• help the doctors prioritise home visits and phone calls
• ensure patients receive appropriate medical care or help at an appropriate time
• direct patients to see an Advanced Nurse Practitioner or other health professional, rather than a doctor where appropriate

Patient Co-ordinators, like all members of the team, are bound by confidentiality rules.  All of our staff are required to adhere to GDPR standards and any information given by you is treated with the strictest confidence.

The practice reception is staffed when the Health Centre is open, and our Patient Co-ordinators will be your first contact with the practice and will ask you for further details. This is to ensure that we can assist you as efficiently as possible and to ensure you are seen by an appropriately qualified clinician.

The Patient Co-ordinator may not be able to give you exactly what you want in terms of who you see and when. The Practice has a finite number of available GP and other clinical appointments. Once these appointments have been booked it is not possible to create new appointments for you. We ask that every caller shows respect and understanding when speaking with our Patient Co-ordinators who work very hard to assist you.

The Patient Co-ordinators are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as doctors and nurses. All patient information on written/computer records will be regarded as confidential and will only be passed to other health professionals on a need-to-know basis.