Meet the Team

Doctors

General practice in the UK has changed a lot recently, especially with the difficulty of hiring new GPs. Like many other practices, we’ve had to think creatively and expand our team to include more than just doctors and nurses.

We now have a great team of doctors (GPs), Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs), paramedics, a Nurse Consultant (NC), practice nurses (PNs), GP Assistants (GPAs), 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.

Our Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) are highly trained, with at least 5 years of clinical experience, and many have extra skills in special areas. They can handle most minor illnesses, as well as support and care for long-term conditions. This helps reduce the workload of our GPs, so they can focus on more serious cases. We know some people are used to seeing a GP for everything, and the changes we’ve made can be hard to accept. However, many patients appreciate the care they’ve received from our ANPs and are happy with the support and treatment.

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 can prescribe medicine and treatments, and refer patients to specialists just like our GPs. If you’re offered an appointment with an ANP, it’s because we know they can help you. If the ANP feels a GP should also see you, they can arrange this during your appointment. We have a GP available every day to support the ANPs.

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

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.

Nurse Consultant

Our Nurse Consultant Di Goring 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.

Advanced Nurse Practitioners

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.

Paramedics

We have a team of Paramedics whose main role is to support our ANPs, and our Nurse Consultant, and will be the first in line to go our on Urgent Home Visits each day. They are an important part of our ‘on the day’ team, who have many years of history and knowledge behind them.

Paramedics:

Practice Nurses

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,   management of Warfarin and DOAC clinics, family planning and travel vaccines.

We have a team of General Practice Assistants (GPAs) in the practice, who are either Clinical or Clerical in nature. They have regular clinics including blood pressure checks and over 75s health checks.  They also assist with minor procedures and provide a chaperone service as required.  The GPAs also manage the Patient POD in reception, 24-hour BP monitoring, ECGs, and process urine test results.

We have a full time Clinical Pharmacist, Andy Brandham, 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 Practitioners are able to deal with a large variety of aches and pains, and can also prescribe medication as well as administer steroid injections.

Patient Advisors 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 Advisors to ask patients for a brief reason why they need to be seen, have a home visit, or request a telephone consultation. 

The Patient Advisors 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 Advisors, 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 Advisors 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 Advisor 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 Advisors who work very hard to assist you.

The Patient Advisors 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.