ABOUT US

?Friends of Park Surgery? is a registered charity which raises money for additional equipment or services to benefit the Surgery.

Membership is open to all Park Surgery patients for an annual subscription of 50p. Members receive three newsletters a year about forthcoming events and topical items by the medical staff. Popular coffee mornings are organised in a town centre hall on Saturdays throughout the year and include book and bric a brac sales and a raffle.

A monthly draw, for members only, is available for a subscription of £12 a year with prizes of £75, £35 and £15; currently there are vacancies in the draw for members.

For almost twenty years the Friends have been active and have purchased such items as additional monitors for the ultrasound scanner, 24 hour ECG monitors, 24 hour blood pressure monitors, waiting room furniture and childrens play equipment.

All patients of the Surgery are welcome to join. Membership forms are available from the Receptionists - we look forward to welcoming you!

Preparing For A Flu Pandemic

The Government has been telling us that the country is in a state of readiness for a flu pandemic and that measures have been in place for a while.

Whilst practices have had ?Business Continuity Plans? in place for number of years to cover the eventuality of power strikes, fire and flood etc, the planning by us for a flu epidemic started in earnest around 2004 when avian flu first became a potential threat.

Our immediate planning naturally involved a meeting of all the clinical and senior administrative staff with representatives from all departments. We agreed on Lead members of staff who were to fine tune the plans and to work to inform the PCTs own plans for each area. Since those early days, we have held review meetings annually to check and update our plans. We have held regular training sessions for all staff and checked our stocks of protective clothing (masks etc) and alcohol hand gel, detergent wipes etc.

From the early days we planned how we would configure the surgery, if we had to see flu patients on the premises. The idea is actually for all suspect cases to stay at home and reduce the spread of infection. Staff have been trained in infection control and the correct way to wash hands and wear a mask. If a suspect case does come into the building the area has to be cleaned after they have left and the area quarantined for 24 hours ? this can be hugely disruptive as we try to rejig work schedules and timetables to accommodate the loss or one or more rooms.

We have discussed what we will do if there is a lot of staff absence due to sickness and what routine services we would have to stop until the emergency was over. These may include minor surgery, travel vaccinations and routine cervical smears.

Email will prove very useful in any emergency as will mobile phone and the phone numbers of all staff are accessible to all staff at home.

The PCT has asked us to work in a Cluster with The Village Surgery in Southwater and we have prepared joint and mutually supportive plans to run alongside the practice plan.

We feel we had a good basic plan which enabled us to deal effectively with Swine Flu when it started to be a problem. Despite having a pharmacy in the building, there is no Tamiflu kept on the premises which would have helped speed the process up significantly as patients could not have Tamiflu until swabs confirmed they had the H1 strain.

We will now actively encourage patients to have a flu vaccination this coming Autumn to help protect all patients, as much as possible, from what may come next.