Patient Involvement Group – 21/09/2011 @ 4pm

Present: Sue Crossley (Patient) Sheila Crothers (Patient) Sue Summersgill (Patient) Catherine Gill (Nurse Practitioner/Practice Partner) H Gandhi (General Practitioner) Michele Bryden (Practice Manager) Kirsty Freeman (Performance & Contracts Co-ordinator) Lisa Helliwell (Admin Co-ordinator)

Apologies: Susan Gledhill (Patient)

  • Michele opened the meeting and welcomed attending patients. It was explained that we plan to hold quarterly meetings and the purpose of today’s initial meeting was to get to know each other and set out what we plan for future meetings.
  • Caritas ‘Ground Rules’ were explained and set out.
  • It is proposed that we may enlist some speakers for future meetings. The aim is to grow our group, retain existing members and recruit new members.
  • Group members were informed that Flu season has now commenced and so far very good. 100 patients were vaccinated in the debut clinic and Clinicians are actively seeking to vaccinate eligible patients opportunistically within routine appointments.
  • Michele explained our management dynamics and explained the concept of our unique structure – being a now solely Nurse Practitioner led group.
  • Sheila voiced concerns over recent changes in GPs @ Mixenden Stones surgery. Catherine explained that although we endeavour to retain regular staff we cannot promise and/or force people to stay. There are regular members of staff who have been based there for long periods ie Wendy, Nurse Practitioner has been at Mixenden for over 3 yrs. Catherine explained that with Caritas being a teaching practice we have clinicians who join us for temporary posts as a part of their studies but then move on, this can create an inaccurate perception that we have an unusually high turnover of staff when this is not always the case. All members agreed that it was commendable that we helped train all medical students/nursing students and understood the need for GP Practices to be engaged in this form of teaching.
  • Caritas Patient Booklets and newsletters were handed round to be taken away for reference.
  • Catherine explained how our triage system works and showed the layout on the big screen. We would welcome that members spread the word regarding how the system works as we believe it is an advantageous system which benefits patients.
  • Kirsty explained the concept of the patient survey and some examples of the questions were shown. At Caritas we feel that the wording of some of the questions are centred on traditional GP practices so therefore casts doubts on the accuracy of our results. It was agreed that we would forward a copy of questions to our members in order for them to feed back on further or alternative questions we could place in our next Patient Survey, all members agreed that they would feed back to us before our next meeting.
  • Michele advised members that we have now commenced text messaging to patients to remind regarding appointments booked. DNA’s have greatly improved and it was unanimously agreed that this is a brilliant development.
  • Date of next meeting discussed and agreed we should meet sooner than originally planned in order to maintain momentum and hopefully recruit further members. Posters to be displayed advising that we are up and running and patient members all agreed to have their names listed.

Next meeting planned for Wednesday 9th November 2011 @ 4pm, Woodside Surgery.