Team working
We were one of the first GP practices in Devon to set up a website in the early years of the internet. At that time the surgery team put together a statement to summarise our values and aims. It is at the top of the website’s Home page:
“Wyndham House Surgery is committed to high quality, accessible, community-based healthcare. We are a friendly, healthy, hardworking, innovative team who share core values of empathy, trust and honesty, in a harmonious, supportive environment.”
The key operational word is ’team’. Without a highly functioning team we would have no chance of providing the service we do, in the way that we do it.
Our team is currently going through some significant alterations due to a set of retirements coinciding with some unforeseen changes. As a result, the surgery will be stretched over the next 4 – 6 weeks as we cope with the transition. Within the surgery we sub-divide ourselves into smaller groups: clinical, dispensary, reception, administration. However, we are small and to ensure we can adapt whenever needed everyone can multi-task and cross cover. This is best demonstrated by your experience of seeing one of our clinicians. Each of us will endeavour to do everything required within one appointment, for example, GPs take blood tests when needed rather than asking patients to make another appointment with another member of the team. This is unusual in GP practices but produces a much faster, more efficient service. I could describe similar examples of how our systems operate smoothly behind the reception desk. As the team changes, we will need to train our new members whilst at the same time cope with covering the staff leave that is already booked. Therefore, as well as seeing some new faces, you might also come across some old ones in different places.
We would be very grateful if patients could bear with us especially during May when it might be difficult to hit our targets of turning prescription requests around within three days. Having five days’ notice for repeat prescriptions would be extremely helpful. We our delaying our Covid booster vaccine clinics until the end of the month. This Spring, the booster is being offered to all patients over 75 years old and patients who are immunosuppressed. These are