Greystoke Surgery

Morpeth NHS Centre, The Mount, Morpeth, NE61 1JX

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Dear Patient
You will have seen that the highest priority for the NHS is to offer booster COVID jabs to everyone over 18. This is a big challenge as it will require everyone to work even harder and longer than they do now. Winter has always seen a lot more illness and higher demand for services. COVID has made it even harder, and the new Booster campaign makes it very difficult for us to continue to provide all our normal services. Our phone lines are overwhelmed by the volume of calls we receive, and we kindly ask you to be patient with us if you need to speak to us. We are prioritising those patients with the highest need based on some questions we may ask you when you call. If you have a vaccine query ring the national booking service, not the surgery.
In order to keep our patients safe and prevent our staff from catching COVID or having to self-isolate, we will be doing telephone (or digital) consultations first and then inviting those patients that we need to see face to face into the surgery. In view of the extremely infectious nature of the new strain we will be rigorously applying control of infection measures within the practice and ask patients to comply with these requirements.
We will do our very best to meet our patients needs but there may be times in the extreme circumstances we are now in that we have to prioritise those in greatest need. Many minor illnesses are self-limiting and do not need a clinical intervention. Patients can often seek help for such conditions from the local pharmacy. Routine care where a patients’ condition is stable may need to be postponed for a while.
We will always do our best for our patients but would ask for your understanding in these most challenging of circumstances.
The new Covid Omicron strain has been identified as a much more transmissible variant. As a result, despite rigorous infection control measures a number of staff will either test positive or require to self isolate which will have an impact on staff levels which will in turn have an impact on the level of service we are able to provide. We will continue to provide care on an urgent basis, but routine care may be compromised under such circumstances. At times when this inevitably happens, we would ask and thank you for your patience.
GP Partners, Greystoke Surgery

https://www.greystokesurgery.co.uk/1263-2/

Contact Details

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Main Surgery Phone Number – 01670 511393

Repeat Prescriptions – 01670 503282

District Nursing Team or Community Staff – 01670 500920

 

 

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A message from Greystoke Surgery to our patients

As a practice, we want to thank you for the kindness, patience, support and understanding displayed over the last 18 months, through the hardest period General Practice has ever faced. All our staff are working to the best of our ability, to provide the best service we can in the current circumstances.

We are seeing more patients, and offering more face-to-face appointments, than before the pandemic – whilst also changing protective gear, cleaning our rooms in-between patients, and continuing to roll out the largest vaccination program the NHS has ever seen – but we appreciate that it may not seem that way. Demand for our services has never been higher and we share your understandable frustration when it is not possible to speak to a GP on the day that you phone. This pattern is seen nationally. The clinical team are working long days to see as many people safely as possible, but there comes a time when we are forced to make the difficult decision to only take emergency calls. This decision is made by the senior GP team and passed to our reception staff who in turn are asked to communicate this message to incoming callers, whilst remaining professional and caring in the process. They do a remarkable job with this, and many patients are understanding despite the disappointment.

Unfortunately, we are becoming increasingly aware of hostility towards our reception staff on the phone lines, which goes above simply expressing frustration. We have had staff in tears due to hurtful, insulting, and personal comments, which in recent weeks has extended to our clinical team via abusive online forums. It breaks our hearts when we read this, when all of us are working at our absolute limit. We will not tolerate abusive behaviour towards any of our staff, in any context, and any identifiable patients posting false and slanderous comments about our staff can expect to face removal from the practice.

Please remember that we are all human: we are Mums, Dads, Aunties, Uncles, sons & daughters. In some cases, we are Grandparents. We come to work, not to be shouted or sworn at, but to help people.

Please, in a world in which you can be anything, be kind.

Thank you.

 

https://www.greystokesurgery.co.uk/1219-2/

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