Stenhouse Medical Centre - Patient Participation Group

Stenhouse Medical Centre - Patient Participation Group

Minutes of the meeting held Wed July 22nd 2015

1/ Present Betty Wilmott, Clive Newton Mike Newman, Peter Newton, Lynne Dale, Rhona North, Alice Isbell (Apprentice), Pam Husband (Operations Manager), Clive Duckworth (Chair), Dr White, (part meeting).

Apologies Chris Baker, Mike Wilkins, Freiya Ketteridge.

2/ Minutes of the previous meeting June 3rd- accepted as correct

3/ Matters Arising

i) Thanks to Clive N & Sue for hosting our recent social gathering

ii) Bench at the entrance. As funding wasn’t available to purchase a bench the Practice has kindly provided one for use primarily by patients awaiting taxis. It had been noted that it was difficult to see cars arrive from inside the building, and a seat outside would help those with difficulty standing. Comment was made at the meeting that a permanent bench may not be a good idea as out of hours it may invite antisocial gatherings outside the Practice. The current seat is only put out when the Practice is open.

iii) DNA figures. Pam said there had been 35 hrs lost for June, commenting that this was an increase of 7 hours compared with June 2014. Dr White said this was perhaps due to patients not turning up as they were not keen to see locums, preferring to rebook for a GP they knew. However, it is important that patients are reminded to cancel in advance so the appointment can be used for someone else. Agreed that the DNA notices displayed under the electronic board in the waiting room are very useful, and that putting a graph chart up showing the monthly trend would help too. Text reminders for appointments are helpful but making it easy to cancel an appointment is essential to keep DNA’s down. Peter suggested it would also be useful for the PPG to have the cumulative month on month totals (eg Jan to Dec). Noted that Stenhouse is still well below the national average at around 3% (Nat av is over 9%)

Dr White asked at this point if she could raise 2 relevant issues that the Practice wanted to highlight to Patients through notices and perhaps hand outs.

i) General Practice in Crisis – This was in the form of aninformation notice to patients concerning the difficulties in recruiting GPs, and asking patients to understand and accept longer waiting times as the remaining GPs try to cope with staff shortages. Additionally it asks patients to think carefully before requesting a GPor Advanced Nurse Practitioner appointment as many times a pharmacist or the reception staff can satisfactorily provide advice or the answer to a problem. The PPG was happy to support this and the finalised notice attached.

ii)Walk in Patients. Dr White said a number of patients still walk in to reception asking for an ‘Urgent, Same Day’ appointment despite the telephone triage system being widely publicised. The Practice wants to put up notices stating that ‘walk in same day’ appointments are not available, even if the patient is standing at reception, and they will still have to use the telephone triage system to talk to a clinician. As there are still a number of patients who repeatedly do this, a suitable notice will enable the reception staff to point this out, and also potentially give them their own copy to keep. Clearly a different approach would be taken for anyone seriously unwell arriving at the Practice, or with other issues, (eg, doesn’t have, or cannot use a phone). Again the PPG was happy to support this and the finalised notice is attached.

4/ Practice Update

i) Website the new website is up and running but there are still some errors to be corrected which is ongoing. The PPG was asked to help check the website and inform Pam of any issues or corrections needed.

ii) Booklets- These are now almost finalised and will be sent out to the PPG to check and make comment. If necessary.

iii) Staffing and other matters. Pam introduced Alice the new Apprentice who started at Stenhouse on July 13th,both Dr Laura Foxwell and Dr Charlotte Jeffries are now on maternity leave, Dr Foxwell will be back with us in 2016. Two new registrars are starting with us in August Dr Mark Steggles (m) and Dr Katharine Woodward(f) who will be with us until August 2016, also Dr Sarav Royan (m) will be covering Dr Foxwell’s maternity leave.

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Pam said screening for men over 65yrs was available at the Practice and will be called by the AAA service based at QMC, clinics will be held over the month of September.

Urgent Care Pilot Scheme. Pam said information was being collated in order for the results to be evaluated. As previously noted, the PPG feel Stenhouse took the lead with this and was the only successful aspect of the whole pilot scheme, so it will be interesting to see what overall results are forthcoming.

iv) Summary Care Record & Summary Record. Clive D said he understood the difference between these was that the Summary Care Record is electronic and each patient can view theirs individually, either in person by asking reception or electronically if an on line patient. This can be viewed by medical staff in e.g The Emergency Dept (A&E), at QMC. The info shows conditions, medications, allergies. The Summary Record however is a written record which contains all the information relating to the patient’s medical history in General Practice, but does not contain any info regarding medical care treatments elsewhere... e.g. in hospitals. The Summary Record is sent from Stenhouse with a first referral to a hospital/clinic but it is for patients to be aware that the receiving doctor will only have the written record of the patients care in General Practice... not a complete record of their medical history and treatments.

5/ Practice & PPG Noticeboards.

i) PracticeMembers commented favourably on the overall recent high standard of the Practice noticeboards noting the tidiness, and therefore clarity of the information attached. The group emphasised how important that relevant, clear and well presented information was to patients in order for important messages to be read and retained.

ii) PPG Lynne had more relevant information on dementia to affix to the PPG board and, following Betty’s suggestion, it was agreed that rather than replace the sheets that had been up for 6 weeks that Lynne would add the new sheet to the existing information. The other board that had ‘What is the PPG’ badly needs updating as some of the info has disappeared. Pam said she would send the original wording to Lynne and Freiya so that a more eye catching display can be created. The photos of the last Health Event are now on the display board... thanks were given to Pam for overcoming certain technical difficulties that caused the slight delay!

6/ Patient Satisfaction Surveys & results from NHS England GP Patient Survey Clive D said he had found the results of the NHS GP Patient Survey relating to Stenhouse for which he had done a summary of the main findings. The overall results can be found on

and so you can see the questions asked the blank survey form can be found on

Clive D said in his opinion the GP survey essentially covered all the main questions asked in the previous ‘in house’ survey forms that had been created in collaboration between the Practice and PPG. He further suggested that the GP Survey analysis of results will save many hours in doing our own collation and summary, and actually makes our own survey process redundant. This was welcomed by the group. Clive D also noted that the demographics of the respondents to the GP Survey were far more representative of the Practice population, having for example, a higher proportion of those in work, and of a younger age group than the PPG had previously managed to gather by mainly targeting the flu clinics. Members were encouraged to access the results and think about specific questions not asked that would be relevant to Stenhouse. Two examples we had included in our own surveys were disabled car parking and lighting in the entrance hall... both of which have been improved upon. The summary Clive D produced of the main GP Survey findings can be found attached to the e-mail header that brought the minutes as due to technical issues it will not attach here in the text.

Pam said the survey results that the University of Nottingham were due to be providing as part of the Urgent care Pilot were not as yet available.

7/ Peoples Council

i) Standards for GP Practice support to PPGs.

This item has been raised as a lot of PPGs feel under supported by their Practice. Given that since April 1st it is a contractual obligation for Practices to create and support PPGs it was agreed that a fairly basic tool could be used for PPG’s to rate their Practice to share with the Clinical Commissioning Group. The Peoples Council asked that PPGs therefore rate their Practice against this tool and submit their results to the CCG. The rating scales are attached as part of the e-mail that brought you these minutes.

ii) Should patients pay for ‘over the counter’ medications? Members of the Peoples Council were asked to support the view that items that can be purchased at a pharmacy should not be given on prescription by their GP, but be paid for by the patient. Whilst being aware of the strain on NHS funding the Peoples Council raised relevant points such as prescriptions of Paracetamol which, although cheap and widely available,cannot be purchased in quantities that many chronic pain sufferers require. Basically support was not given by the Peoples Council as the issues are more complex than as presented but, (post meeting note), wrongly the minutes of the Peoples Council recorded support for the idea. This has been subsequently challenged and the minutes are to be amended.

iii) Antibiotics ThePeoples Council was given a presentation, and PPGs were then asked what they could do to reduce the expectation from patients for antibiotics. The general view was that it was the responsibility of prescribers to explain why or why not the patient would benefit from antibiotics, and that the advertising campaign regarding antibiotics was fairly good. One aspect noted however is for better education on the difference between viral and bacterial infections as antibiotics do not work with a virus.

8/ Dementia Friends Further discussion was held on how to take dementia awareness further for Stenhouse patients and carers. A view from the Practice is for a session to be held between the PPG and the reception staff so that PPG members can have a discussion and raise awareness about issues with dementia when patients visit the Surgery. Clive D felt that although many of the PPG had had some contact with dementia they were not experts,and recommended that current patients and carers are invited by the Practice to join in a session so they can comment 1st hand on what Stenhouse does well and where potentially they can improve. Obviously there are practical limitations as to who could attend as one of the main problems for carers is being able to havethe time and support to get out of the house. This in itself would be useful to hear about and quantify, as it is a major stress on carers. Pam agreed to take the matter back to the Practice for further consideration.

9/ Health Event This year’s Health Event will as usual be held to coincide with the October flu clinics. Unfortunately time ran out to discuss this so a ‘special meeting’ dedicated to Health Event topics/ ideas, is to be held on Monday 24th August at 11a.m. for strictly one hour only. Please put thinking caps on so we can hit the ground running. Also members from the Virtual Group, or anyone with ideas and opinions is most welcome to send them in through Pam please.

11/ Any other business none

12/ Date and time of next meeting is for the Health Event planning.

Monday 24th Aug at 11 a.m.

The date of the next full meeting to be agreed on 24thAug

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