Willow Tree Family Doctors News Blog

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...