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Disappointing

Story from nhs.uk

"Disappointing"

About: The Springhead Medical Centre

My family has been at this practice for 20 years. I have never really needed much help from the doctors and had felt fully supported by the surgery.

Then my child became ill last year with a chronic condition and unfortunately I have been disappointed with the lack of care and support I have received. The doctor I was passed to was only temparay and only available once a fortnight at times and now has left the surgery. The nurse practitioner who was full supportive but obviously overworked has now left also. Receptionists are obviously under pressure but it sometimes feels as if you are causing a problem to ask for an appointment, if you can get through on the phone to make one.

I had a very sick child who is thankfully improving, this is of little thanks to the surgery who would not pass on blood test results or help with hospital appointments. This made the whole process much more stressful. This used to be such a fantastic surgery with caring staff.

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Responses

Response from The Springhead Medical Centre 5 years ago
The Springhead Medical Centre

Submitted on 24/06/2018 at 19:59
Published on nhs.uk at 20:05

Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback - unfortunately by doing so anonymously it makes it very difficult for us to respond in detail.

Temporary GP's or Locum GP's are now a fact of life in General Practice. It is very difficult to recruit new Partners or Salaried GPs and so we like virtually every other practice in the country have to rely on Locum GPs.

We are very sorry that our Children's Nurse Practitioner has left but it was her decision to retire from the practice. She was a very valuable member of the team and we were sorry to see her go.

Regarding blood tests and hospital appointments. Again it is very difficult to know exactly what the issue was that you were dissatisfied with.

Our Reception staff are only able to say if a blood result was "normal" or not they are not allowed to give the value or interpret the result in any way as they are not clinicians. We also often find that hospital services refuse to accept our test results and insist on doing the tests themselves.

With regard to hospital appointments - we refer patients to colleagues in secondary care if indicated by GP assessment. Once the referral has gone it is then in the hands of the hospital trust when and where patients can be seen, we have little to no influence over them once referrals have been made.

We are sorry that things have not gone well - if you would like to contact our Patient Services Manager she would be happy to discuss it with you and see if there is anything we can learn from your experience and do better in the future.

Springhead Medical Centre

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