Willow Tree Family Doctors News Blog

E-Consults are here You now have the chance to consult with doctors or administrators using an online form and receive a response by the end of the next working day. Great for administrative requests or medical concerns when you are unsure what to do next or if you may not need to be seen. We'll asses the problem and get back to you and often sort out your problem without the need to take time out to come in!   Go to our Website and click on the large banner on the home page : You will be offered  3 choices : Find out specific information about your condition -  this will lead you to detailed information about your symptoms or illness, if you know what you are looking for. It will offer you various solutions which may also include an e-consultation with the GP. The information provided is all sensible, evidence based NHS approved content which will save you being led up the garden path or unnecessarily worried by the usual Googl...

It's that flu jab time of year again!  F lu jabs are now here.  They are coming in batches so best check what is available.  THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT SORTS OF JAB THIS YEAR! Currently we have stock for the over 65 AND under 65 age groups.   They   are free of charge and are recommended for   all those over 65 years , all pregnant women (at whatever stage), those under 65 (including children over 6m) in certain high risk groups - see below -  and you may also qualify if you are a carer for a vulnerable person or receive the carer's allowance or live in a long stay care facility.  Last year was pretty bad, so don't delay! This year is a little more complex in view of the 2 different flu vaccines - the ' Trivalent' which works best for those over 65yrs (is is 'adjuvanted' meaning it has an extra booster built into it in view of the rather more lethargic immune system as we get older) and the 'Quadrivalent' for those at risk in the younge...

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2018 National GP Patient Survey The national GP Patient Survey is run by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the NHS each year. They send out questionnaires in January to random patients from a GP register to gain an idea of what patients think about their practice. 394 surveys were sent to our patients and 125 were returned. As in previous years the results are generally good. 72% found it easy to get through on the phone (67% locally, 70% nationally) 79% were satisfied with the appointment times (65% locally, 66% nationally) 73% were offered a choice of appointment (65% locally, 62% nationally) 71% describe their experience of making an appointment as good (63% locally, 69% nationally) 90% say the health professional they saw was good at giving enough time (81% locally, 87% nationally) 92% say the healthcare professional was good at listening to them (86% locally, 89% nationally) The full results are here If you are really brave there are huge spreadsheets to download to compa...

We are being asked to cut down our prescribing in NW London The NHS in NW London CCGs: Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, and Westminster spent over £13 million in 2016 on products that can be bought without a prescription at community pharmacies. The NHS is under pressure. Our budgets are not large enough to pay for all the treatments the public would like us to provide. We would therefore like to spend less on medicines you can buy without a prescription so as to free up funds for other valuable NHS services.   So practices across North West London are being asked to stop routinely prescribing medicines which are available to buy over the counter in pharmacies (and, in the case of some medicines, in supermarkets and other shops too). If a medicine you need can be bought without a prescription, your GP may ask if you are willing to buy it.  If you are not willing to buy it, it will be prescribed. ...

New Clinical Pharmacist Shaina Thakrar "I qualified from the University of Nottingham in 2014 and completed training as an Independent Prescriber in 2018, with a keen interest in diabetes. My role as a Clinical Pharmacist in the practice is a varied and expanding! I deal with prescription and medication queries, see patients for medication reviews and help with the management of long-term conditions. When I am not at work, I enjoy going to the gym and spending time with my family and friends." We welcome Shaina to this new role to help us develop our services to patients and high standard of clinical care. Pharmacists are extremely valuable at this time of increasing pharmaceutical complexity, with many new drugs being developed and patients taking more diverse mixtures of drugs as the treatments for long term conditions become ever more sophisticated. She will also be helping us with changes to medication followin...

We welcome Rebecca   Feeley, who starts in mid July "I’m so happy to be joining the Willow Tree team and integrating my role as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner & Independent Nurse Prescriber.  I have worked in accident and emergency departments for 15 years, beginning as a staff nurse graduating to an advanced emergency nurse practitioner after many years of training.    During my many years in A&E I specialised in Injuries and minor illness and also have experience in critical care and paediatrics. My role as an advanced clinical practitioner means that I complete full assessments of patients, including a full medical examination, diagnosis of illness and injuries,  treatment and discharge. I am also a nurse prescriber, which means I can prescribe any medication necessary during my consultation.    I shall be taking part in the Rapid Access appointments 2.5 days a week, working alongside the Duty Doctor who sh...

Congratulations to Ramesh of Judd's Pharmacy, now open at Willow Tree Family Doctors!  Ramesh has opened his state-of-the-art pharmacy, complete with all the high tech. to ensure accurate and timely dispensing of medication. He has an exciting new robot dispensing system from Germany, one of only a handful in UK pharmacies. We wish Ramesh every success in his venture and hope our continued close cooperation will help improve and extend services to patients.

When we visit patients at home we often find piles of old unused medicines, inhalers and other items. Not only does this present a hazard but it is a huge drain on the increasingly scarce  NHS resources. It is estimated that every year around £300m is wasted in unused medicines.  This would for instance pay for   11,778  MORE community nurses   or  80,906  MORE hip replacements   or  19,799  MORE drug treatment courses for breast cancer   or  300,000  MORE drug treatment courses for Alzheimer's   or  312,175  MORE cataract operations, so it is a major problem. How does it happen? Often with repeat prescriptions the whole lot is ordered each time, meaning over-stocking occurs, or when new medicines are started sometimes the old ones continue to be ordered. Sometimes  patients don't like to take the prescribed medicines or have side effects and stop them but are afraid to tell the doctor. Other times d...

It has been a long journey but we’ve finally made it: Willow Tree Family Doctors was approved as a Training Practice earlier today by Health Education England - North West London . This means that later this year we will hopefully be able to welcome Foundation 2 (F2) doctors to our wonderful team. The Foundation Programme is a  two-year training programme which forms the bridge between medical school and specialist/general practice training. Drs Dodhia and Mehrali , who have overseen the process, were also approved as trainers. F2 doctors remain under clinical supervision (as do all doctors in training) but take on increasing responsibility for patient care. In particular they begin to make management decisions as part of their progress towards independent practice. We believe that achieving and maintaining training practice status enhances the quality of the medical care that we provide at the practice. It also enables patients to see a wider range of clinicians whil...

Sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) have just been submitted by  NHS organisations in different parts of the country outlining the future of health and care services in their area. Ours involves the whole of North West London and involves the NHS services and the Local Authorities planning ways in which they hope to come together to deliver health and care in a more intelligent and integrated way, bridging the gap between social care and health services.  One of the principle themes now is cooperation rather than competition, which has  driven the way we work over the last 4 years (in, some would say, a very destructive and dysfunctional way). The other themes are, of course, diminishing resources - both money and people - and rising and changing patterns of demand and how to provide good quality care under these circumstances.  There will be a lot of re-balancing budgets and reshaping the types of services offered. There is simply no possibility of ca...

If you want urgent (unplanned) medical help where do you turn to – your GP, A&E,   a Walk In Centre , an Urgent Care Centre,   Minor Injuries Unit, or Out of Hours GP service, ring 999 or 111 ? In hours and Out of Hours the choices are rather different. This multiplicity of choices and the different options in each area makes for a very confusing picture and it is no wonder people often go to less appropriate places. There is a lot of duplication and very poor communication so that you have to repeat your story and there no access to your complete medical record held at your GP practice and the information about your urgent care contact may not filter back to the GP or other people involved in your ongoing care. You may be seen by a doctor or a nurse or another type of professional. And the cost is high; attendance at A&E is rising inexorably and you’ll have seen the headlines showing that the system is breaking and unsustainable in its present form. We ne...

Information Processing We in Brent CCG are part of the  North West London Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups which is engaged on a huge project to integrate health and social care across the 8 boroughs of North West London ( Whole Systems Integration Pilot ).  A fundamental part of this is to link the information systems so if you are seen in A&E, General Practice, Hospital Outpatients, Community clinic, wherever, that appropriate levels of information flow across to enable safe, efficient care. Some of this information also needs to tell Social Services what you need to have in place when you are discharged from hospital, the Ambulance crew to understand your essential medical history in an emergency, the Palliative Care team to help give the most appropriate care and all the Community teams to coordinate their care properly. Surprisingly, most of the IT systems do not speak to each other and so there is duplicati...

It's that time of the year when all children get ill with coughs, colds and other viral infections often accompanied by fevers, vomiting and rashes and they can feel really miserable and distressed.  As adults we've all been through these infections and  as a result  our immune systems now give us resistance, so even if we get ill we usually don't feel so bad. And we can understand and know we'll feel better in a few days but a young child doesn't know this. When we see a sick child with a high fever it can be extremely worrying for a parent to know if it is part of a more serious illness and what should be done to make your child better. The NHS 111 service has produced a very useful booklet to help:                                                When should I worry? Signs of potentially more serious illness: Your child is drowsy or irritable . (...

There is a multiplicity of services in this increasingly fragmented NHS. Where do you go when you're ill?  With A&E waiting times typically of several hours and likely to get worse this winter, it seems many choose that option. But is it the best? If you you haven't had an accident and it's not an emergency (chest pain, collapse, loss of consciousness etc) then probably not.  Many people visiting A&E are making the wrong choice and are delaying the care of more urgent cases. Should they instead have chosen a walk-in centre, urgent care centre, GP out of hours service, visited a pharmacist or checked what to do on-line? So, how to choose, if you're not sure?  A good starting point is to ring NHS 111  which has a directory of all local services. If it's not urgent and they are busy, you may have to wait a while until someone calls you back. You will be asked about your problem and a computer will help the adviser to decide ...