The Practice Team
Our practice team consists of a range of different healthcare workers who are all here to help you. As the practice team now has such a wide range of trained healthcare professionals, you may not always need to see or speak to a doctor to get the help you need.
Members of the team: Debbi, Sarah
Our Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) hold clinics and see patients on a daily basis. Advanced Nurse Practitioners can review patients and offer treatment in the form of prescriptions, sick notes, in-house testing, referrals to the hospital or other services as required. ANPs can deal with a wide range of the conditions and symtoms. The only things our ANPs cannot deal with are: pregnancy related issues, babies under 3 months, test results and long term/ongoing conditions or symptoms.
Kerry
As part of our series on the services and clinicians who work here at the practice, this month we want to talk about Kerry, our diabetic nurse. Kerry has been with us since February 2022 and works on Tuesdays. Kerry works closely with our diabetic patients seeing them through out the year to review their diabetic control and help make improvements. In reviews, she will help patients to understand what diabetes is and how various activities, lifestyle changes and medication work to give self-confidence to manage the condition.
Members of the team: Jo, Lisa, Lucia, Lucy
Our nursing team seeing hundreds of patients every week for a range of different reasons. Appointments with the nurses include (but are not limited to):
- Annual Reviews for chronic diseases (Asthma, Diabetes, Hypertension, COPD etc)
- Blood Test
- BP Check
- Cervical Screening
- Childhood Immunisations
- Coil Checks/Removals
- D-Dimers
- Dopplers
- Dressings
- ECG
- Injections
- Lifestyle Advice
- Pill Checks
- Spirometry
- Swabs
- Travel Vaccinations
- Weight Monitoring
- Wound Reviews
Members of the team: Aya and Jennifer
Our in-house pharmacy team deal with the majority of prescription requests that come in from patients specifically the acute requests for medications.
As part of Lincolnshire Healthcare Partnership we also have a number of services and healthcare professionals available which we can offer to patients.
Members of team: Tracey Bates, Karen Innes, and Kevin Kelly
Our mental health team work across our PCN delivering mental health support to registered patients from all four surgeries. They talk to anyone who may be struggling with their wellbeing either in person or over the phone. Both Kevin and Tracey are Registered Nurses and Karen is a Care Coordinator.
The aim of our mental health team is to provide holistic, collaborative assessments, interventions and signposting that address matters that are important to you. That may be looking at your social and occupational health, helping you to gain self-help tools to support yourself, or addressing certain mental health conditions as well as looking at prescribing needs where applicable. They may offer a one-off contact or review your progress following an agreed plan of action and support. They may be able to offer a brief intervention or signpost you to a more appropriately resourced service. The mental health team have good links with the local community and can work alongside other agencies that you may be involved with.
Kevin Kelly has appointments at the practice every Wednesday and Thursday, as well as every other Monday remotely. Karen's services are available following a referral from the practice.
Members of team: Karolina, Lin, Liz, Vincent
As part of our Lincoln Healthcare Partnership Primary Care Network (PCN) we are able to offer appointments with our First Contact Musculoskeletal team. The aim of this team is to reduce the waiting time for help with musculoskeletal conditions including problems with muscles, bones and joints. Patients at the practice requesting appointments for new musculoskeletal problems will be offered an appointment with this service rather than a doctor. The team can perform an initial assessment of the condition and can offer immediate advice in the form of exercises, prescriptions, sick notes as well as organising investigations including blood tests and scans if needed. The team can also organise referrals to be made if a course of treatment is needed.
The First Contact Musculoskeletal team also provide a Hip and Knee service which aims to identify any patients who may need hip and knee surgery going forwards. Patients with hip and knee pain will be invited to book in with our team to assess and determine if they are suitable for the virtual orthopaedic clinic.
Members of team: Aatika, Chris, Heather, Mark, Rebekah, Vivienne
The PCN pharmacy team are available to deal with medical queries. The team will deal directly with some prescription requests and queries from patients as well as reviewing and actioning letters from the hospital and other services where medications have been started or changed.
Within our pharmacy team we also have Aatika and Chris who conduct structured medication reviews with patients. These are an opportunity to review medications that a patient is taking with all aspects of a patients health considered. The reviews are beneficial to patients especially those taking multiple medications: they improve experience and quality of care through patients being involved in decision making and having better understanding of medications; they reduce risk of harm from medications a patient is taking (e.g. adverse drug events, side effects, hospitalisation); they improve value for local health systems. Aatika and Chris also review patients for medication queries.
The practice offers referrals for patients to a Social Prescribing service which aims to connect people for health and wellbeing. The Social Prescribing team can help patients and connect them with non-medical support including: social groups, support for families and carers, housing benefit and financial advice, ways to look after health and become more active, opportunities to build confidence and learn new skills or reduce anxiety, getting patients out and about and engaged. Social Prescribing is an amazing service available to any patients with our practice. If a clinician thinks you would benefit from this service they may offer a referral to you. If you think you could benefit—please contact the practice to enquire.
Sarah
Our Frailty nurse works within the PCN looking after our care home patients and frail patients. As part of the role Sarah conducts weekly check ins with our care homes to check if patients are ok or if they need any input. Sarah also conducts home visits with our housebound and frail patients for general reviews and check ups if required but also for annual reviews to review chronic diseases including things such as blood tests.