News
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Christmas and New Year repeat prescriptions
November 2011
In order to assist patients over the busy Christmas and New
Year period and to help with the smooth running of the practice,
patients may order their repeat prescriptions a week early if they are
due in the Christmas/New Year week. This will allow us to get your
prescription to the Chemist in plenty of time so that there are no
delays due to the bank holiday period. We would strongly urge patients
to put in their repeat prescription a week early if it is due at this
time.
Sister Viv Wright
November 2011
After many years at the practice, our diabetic nurse, Sister
Viv Wright, will be retiring in December. We would like to wish Sister
Wright a long and happy retirement. Sister Tina Morgan will be taking
over diabetic clinic after Sister Wright retires.
Dr Louisa Evans
22nd November 2011
After many years at the practice as a salaried doctor, Dr
Louisa Evans will be moving on to pastures new in January 2012. On
behalf of the practice we would like to wish Dr Evans well with her
future career.
Twitter
26th May 2011
I suppose it was inevitable eventually......
You can now follow us on Twitter
@PencoedMedical. We periodically post information
on the news section of this website, but you can get more up to date
information on Twitter. We will be evaluating the use of Twitter and
giving it a suitable length of time to see if our patients are using it.
It is our intention to post information about any surgery or clinic
cancellations, any closures due to bad weather during the winter, any
topical local health information (outbreaks of infectious diseases) and
possibly up to the minute information about any late running surgeries -
it all depends on demand and whether our patients find it useful. Watch
this space....
Bank Holiday opening hours
26th May 2011
The surgery closes at 18:30 on Friday 27th May and re-opens at
08:00 on Tuesday May 31st. During the time that the surgery is closed,
all emergencies will be dealt with by the out of hours service. If you
phone the surgery over the bank holiday, your call will be automatically
routed to the out of hours service.
Llanharan surgery closed
21st December 2010
07:00
Unfortunately, the access to our Llanharan surgery and adjacent
parking remains unsafe this morning and we have made the decision to run
all services from our Pencoed surgery again. Patients who have
appointments booked at Llanharan this morning have been contacted to ask
them to attend at Pencoed.
Bad weather
UPDATE
20th December 2010 07:26am
We're experiencing major difficulties this
morning getting staff into the surgery. Three of our doctors have
currently abandoned their vehicle in the Cardiff area, unable to get to
a main road. All booked surgeries are cancelled and we will be dealing
with emergencies only. If the doctor is unable to get to you, as seems
likely at present, you will be offered advice on the phone. Please only
phone the surgery if it is a genuine emergency, we have fewer staff and
we need to keep the phone lines open to deal with emergencies.
If you are about to run out of your tablets, you may be
able to obtain an emergency supply from the pharmacy by taking your
tablet boxes along and requesting an emergency supply to tide you over.
Please make use of the online prescription request service available via
this website. We will update you as and when the situation changes.
Bad weather
UPDATE
19th December 2010 17:34pm
Due to current and expected adverse weather
conditions, we will be operating an emergencies only
service from our Pencoed main surgery on Monday
December 20th. The Llanharan surgery will closed
and all services will be working out of Pencoed. All routine services
will be postponed. Any telephone calls to Llanharan surgery will be
routed to Pencoed and we expect a big increase in telephone calls as a
result. Therefore we would urge you only to phone on Monday morning if
absolutely necessary. If you wish to cancel an appointment, please use
the online facility via this website to save the telephone lines for
urgent calls - we will even phone you back to rearrange your appointment
to save you from hanging on the line waiting to be put through.
This situation will be reviewed at noon. We have been warned of
further bad weather causing disruption tomorrow and if this is the case,
we will continue to operate an EMERGENCIES ONLY service out of Pencoed
in the afternoon.
A number of Doctors are unable to move their own vehicles from their
homes and will be transported in. As a result, we have fewer Doctors
available to do housecalls. Again, please only request a housecall if it
is an absolute emergency. Your call will be triaged by a doctor prior to
any visit. Most side roads are causing problems and Doctors usually have
to leave their vehicle on the main road and walk to their destination,
greatly reducing the number of patients we can see.
Finally, we would like to reassure you that any emergencies will be seen
and dealt with in the usual way to the best of our abilities. Please
bear with us. We are doing our best.
Influenza, coughs and colds
19th December 2010
During the past week we have seen a massive
increase in the numbers of patients presenting with coughs, colds and
influenza. On Monday morning in Llanharan surgery, there were over 60
emergency extra patients and people were queuing to get into the
building. The vast majority of patients seen had mild illness such as
coughs and colds and were advised paracetamol and fluids. Antibiotics do
not work against viral illnesses and most people can treat themselves at
home with paracetamol and fluids. In order to help you, we have added
information to our "Health information" section - you may wish to read
this before contacting the surgery.
Bad weather
UPDATE
17th December 2010 11:53am
Bridgend Local Health board have now closed
all GP surgeries in the Bridgend area due to adverse weather conditions
and expected deterioration this afternoon. Both Pencoed and Llanharan
Medical Centres are now closed. Anyone needing to see a GP urgently
should phone the surgery number and the call will be automatically
routed to the Primecare out of hours service who will be handling all
calls.
Bad weather
17th December 2010 07:00am
Due to the adverse weather conditions, our
Llanharan branch surgery will be CLOSED today. We will
be operating an EMERGENCIES ONLY service out of our main Pencoed
surgery. If you have booked an appointment this morning for a non urgent
condition, we would be very grateful if you could use the online cancel
appointment facility to let us know. Doctors who were scheduled to be at
Llanharan will be phoning their booked patients to see if they can deal
with the problem on the phone. If you are booked for an appointment at
Llanharan, please wait for the phone call from the Doctor first. If you
need to be seen, the Doctor will tell you when to attend at Pencoed.
Please bear in mind that it takes us considerably longer to do
housecalls in adverse weather conditions.
If you have a booked appointment at Pencoed for a non urgent condition,
please use the online cancel apppointment facility on this website to
let us know. We will arrange a callback and do all we can to rearrange
your appointment. It helps us considerably if you use the online
facility because it frees up the telephone lines for urgent calls.
We are very grateful for your assistance with this.
Christmas opening hours for Pencoed and Llanharan
November 24th 2010
*IMPORTANT* If your repeat
medication is due over the holiday period, to avoid the possibility of
running out of medication, please ensure that you submit your repeat
slip one week earlier than normal.
Pencoed Medical Centre opening hours 0844 477 8890:
Friday
December
24th - OPEN AM ONLY
Monday 28th December - CLOSED
Tuesday 29th December - CLOSED
Friday 31st December open am as normal doors closed at 4pm – 4pm
to 6pm Emergencies
only
Monday 03rd January
- CLOSED
FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY RING 999 FOR AN AMBULANCE
NHS DIRECT 0845 46 47
FOR URGENT MEDICAL ATTENTION PLEASE CONTACT PRIMECARE ON
Llanharan Medical Centre opening hours 0844 477 8792
Friday
December 24th - OPEN AM ONLY
Tuesday 29th December - CLOSED
Friday 31st December open am as normal doors closed at 12.45pm –
Emergencies only at Pencoed
Surgery from 4.00 pm to 6.30pm
Requests for repeat prescriptions during
appointments November 24th
2010
YOUR APPOINTMENT
WITH THE DOCTOR IS FOR 10 MINUTES ONLY. The Practice
would appreciate your assistance by not requesting your repeat
medication during your consultation; this should be done by submitting
your request to reception in the normal manner. Thank
you for your co-operation
Dr Griff Gwilliam
October 4th 2010
It is with great sadness that we announce
the death of Dr Griffith Gwilliam on
Friday October 1st.
Until his retirement, Dr. Gwilliam had worked at
this Practice for over 30 years.
He will be greatly missed.
The Funeral will take place at Coychurch
Crematorium on Friday October 8th at
2.45pm.
Welcome to our new website!
July 2010
It's been a long time coming, but it's here at last.
You might not realise it, but we were pioneers of GP websites in the UK
and, at one point, were one of the most visited GP websites in the UK. Having been one of the very first GP practices in the UK to run a
practice website, we felt that the time was right to update the site to
bring all the information up to date and give it a more modern look. The
main reason for the change has been to increase the security of the
online prescription ordering system. The old system involved the website
"e-mailing" your request to us and is less secure (in theory that e-mail
could be intercepted by a third party). The new system involves a
"secure server system" which is similar to the system you use when you
do online banking or purchasing on the internet. You will notice the
"padlock" symbol in your browser when you access the prescribing section
and your details are held on a secure server, which can only be accessed
by our prescribing personnel.
If you have any comments about the website or if you feel that it would
benefit from any additions or information, please let us know. We have
funded and developed this website personally - we recieve no NHS or
external funding for the running of the site (the Doctors pay for the
website out of their own pockets, in other words), so it means a lot to
us if you find this facility useful. Unfortunately, due to the
complexity and security of the clinical software system used in the
surgery, it is not yet possible for us to integrate the appointments
system with this site, so you cannot book appointments online yet.
However, you CAN cancel your appointment. Over 300 patients a month book
an appointment then fail to turn up. This blocks appointments for others
and is one of the main reasons why you have to wait to see a Doctor. In
order to try to address this, if you cancel your appointment online, we
will phone you back if you like, so that you don't need to wait in a
queue on the phone to rearrange your appontment. Finally, we would like to emphasise that it is impossible to access your
medical records via this website because they are held on a completely
different system which is not accessible online and not connected in any
way to this website.
How we used our website
in the last 12 months
May 2010
During the cold weather this winter, our website was an
invaluable tool to inform you of changes to surgeries and emergency
provision of medical care during adverse weather conditions. Access to
our Llanharan surgery was blocked by snow and ice on a few occasions
(not least because the local authority omitted our road from the
gritting schedule....) and we had to run an emergency service from our
main surgery in Pencoed. We informed you of these changes immediately
they happened, via the website. When swine flu struck, we were inundated
with calls from worried patients asking for advice. To help our patients
we updated our site with all of the LOCAL information that was relevant
to our own patients. We plan to do the same in future. Please visit
again. We welcome any suggestions about improving our website.
Historic news items from 2009.........
SWINE FLU UPDATE September 2009
We have seen a dramatic decline in cases of swine flu in the area over the past couple of weeks and services at the medical centres are continuing as normal. We anticipate that cases will rise again in the autumn and will keep our patients informed of the situation locally via this website. However, for the time being it's "business as usual"
SWINE FLU UPDATE July 21st 2009
Keep calm and carry on.....
The numbers of suspected cases of swine flu continue to rise in our area, but the greatest demand on services at present appears to be from the "worried well". We would like to remind patients that this is a mild illness for the vast majority of patients. If you have symptoms of flu and do not belong to a high risk group, you should have no reason to contact the surgery unless you are particularly unwell - paracetamol, fluids and rest should suffice - "Tamiflu" is only being issued to high risk groups (see below).
Tamiflu prescriptions:
From Monday 20th July patients in receipt of prescriptions for antiviral medication should go to their nearest /usual pharmacy to collect their medication. All pharmacies within Bridgend have received their stock and arrangements have been made to re-stock them as required. Please remember that patients should get a 'flu friend' to collect their prescription on their behalf, when issued following telephone consultation, and to collect their antivirals from their pharmacy. Prescriptions for suspension for children (under 1s) can only be dispensed from hospital pharmacies - Princess of Wales Hospital - in the Bridgend area.
Young children
Children young enough to be carried are being seen and assessed in their parents' cars in the car park after surgery. When you phone the surgery, you will be asked for details and if the doctor or nurse feels that face to face assessment is necessary, you will be asked to attend by car after surgery when the car park is less busy. Simply phone or send in a symptom free representative to let us know when you arrive. You will be asked for your car registration number and the doctor or nurse will come out to assess you. This helps us a great deal because each house visit can take up 30 minutes of a doctor's time, whereas 4 patients can be seen in the same time if assessed in their car. Our main reason for assessing the under 5s is not because of concern about swine flu, as most most cases are mild anyway - these children are being assessed mainly to exclude other conditions (such as bacterial infections) that may require a different form of treatment. Diagnosis is often less clear cut in young children because they can't give an accurate description of their symptoms and this is the main reason why we ask to see them, not because of any concern about swine flu per se.
SWINE FLU UPDATE July 16th 2009
Enquiries about swine flu have increased tremendously over the past week and we are now beginning to see a big increase in the numbers of suspected cases. As these enquiries increase, so the doctors and nurses are having to deal with a considerable increase in additional workload whilst trying to manage "business as usual" with routine appointments. We have discouraged patients from coming to the surgery if they are ill enough to need to be seen and have symptoms of swine flu. Most, but regrettably not all, patients are adhering to this advice. As a result, we are dealing with a big increase in telephone consultations and home visits. This means that, inevitably, there are unavoidable delays during our booked surgeries. Unfortunately, as is human nature, staff at the medical centres (receptionists, nurses and doctors) are experiencing abuse from some individuals because they have been waiting longer than anticipated. We would ask that you bear with us during this period - we are doing our best, but delays may occur despite our best efforts.
We would like to highlight the following points:
Swine flu, for the majority of cases is a relatively mild disease and most patients should recover without need to contact the surgery. Simply having the flu is not a reason to contact the surgery provided you are not seriously unwell and do not belong to a high risk group.
Common queries and answers as of 16th July:
Do I have swine flu?
Your first action should be to contact NHS Direct on 0845 4647 for advice.
Suspect swine flu if:
-
Sudden onset fever (>38°) and TWO or more of the following:
-
CoughSore throatRunny noseLimb/joint painHeadacheUnfortunately, these symptoms are not unique to the flu and many patients with simple viral infections may have very similar symptoms.
What should I do if I have the symptoms of flu?
Provided you do not belong to one of the high risk groups (below), you should stay at home until you are well. Take paracetamol regularly and plenty of fluids. Do not attempt to go into work or "soldier on". It is foolish to go to work with the flu and you will only spread the virus amongst your colleagues. If you do not belong to a high risk group, you will not be given Tamiflu and will be treated with paracetamol and fluids alone. Unless you are seriously unwell and in need of urgent medical attention, you should not need to contact the surgery.
I've had contact with somebody who has swine flu
Wait and see. We are not giving Tamiflu to patients who do not have symptoms and in any case, Tamiflu will only be given to high risk patients who currently have symptoms of flu (as detailed above)
Who is eligible for tamiflu?
Only patients who belong to the following "High risk" groups will be offered Tamiflu:
-
<5yrs old
-
>65 yrs old
-
Chronic lung, heart, kidney or neurological disease
-
Chemotherapy, or drugs affecting immune system (steroids, Methotrexate, azathioprine etc)
-
Pregnant women
-
Patients who’ve been treated for asthma within past 3 years
-
“Morbidly obese” patients (BMI > 40). i.e. patients who are exceptionally overweight
Tamiflu is only given if you have symptoms of swine flu as defined above. It is not being given any more if you've simply had contact with somebody who may have had swine flu. Tamiflu can be started within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. At present, if you need Tamiflu, doctors are deciding based on the information given over the phone. If the Doctor decides that you have swine flu and belong to a high risk group you will be issued with a prescription. You should send a SYMPTOM FREE representative to collect the prescription from the surgery. At present, you have to take the prescription to the HOSPITAL pharmacy (i.e. Princess of Wales hospital) to collect your Tamiflu. However, this situation may change and there may be a time when this may become available at local Pharmacies - but we will keep you informed via this website
How is it spread?
This is a very important consideration. Not only is it desirable to avoid influenza in the first place, but if you have it, you have a duty not to pass it on to others! Bear in mind that if you pass it on to healthcare professionals - who are no more immune to it than anyone else - then there will be fewer doctors and nurses available to help out! Never has the phrase "coughs and sneezes spread diseases" been more important!
-
Cover your mouth with a tissue if you cough or sneeze. Dispose of the tissue after use and wash your hands.
-
Frequent handwashing
-
Isolation if you have the symptoms - there is nothing "stoic" about trying to go to work if you have the symptoms of the flu - you will only pass it on to others
How are the doctors dealing with swine flu?
We are dealing with swine flu in the following ways:
Receptionists have been issued with guidelines to identify which patients have the symptoms of swine flu. If a patient has symptoms of swine flu, they do not belong to a high risk group and they are not seriously unwell, they will be advised to stay at home and take plenty of paracetamol and fluids until they are better.
SIMPLY HAVING SWINE FLU IS NOT IN ITSELF A REASON TO SEE THE DOCTOR.
WE ONLY WANT TO HEAR FROM THOSE WHO BELONG TO HIGH RISK GROUPS OR ARE SO SERIOUSLY UNWELL THAT THEY NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR
If a patient has symptoms of swine flu and are either seriously unwell or belong to a high risk group, they are placed on a "swine flu callback list" where they will be phoned back by a triage nurse or doctor to decide on the best way of dealing with them. If a patient has swine flu and is seriously ill enough to need to be seen, they will be seen at home and NOT at the surgery
The main problems for the doctors:
1. Patients turning up at the surgery with symptoms of swine flu. This is the single most effective way of passing on swine flu to the most vulnerable patients in the community whilst passing on the flu to the medical staff. If the doctors, nurses and receptionists are all ill with swine flu, then there is nobody to look after our patients!
2. Abusive patients who have been waiting longer than anticipated for their appointment. We're doing our best. We have the same number of staff but a huge increase in telephone calls and house visits. We have to prioritise to deal with the most sick patients. If you've been sat in the waiting room for a long time, it is for a good reason. The doctor isn't ignoring you, he or she may be dealing with urgent queries on the phone or may have been called out on an urgent home visit. Even if it seems quiet in the waiting room, it may not be quiet "behind the scenes". Most of our patients are understanding of this and we are very grateful for your patience. Unfortunately, a vocal minority are abusing staff and this does nothing to help the situation.
Useful websites:
Health Protection Agency - Swine flu