Broadwater Medical Centre Newsletter

February 2023

 

BACK TO MAIN INDEX

Welcome to the Febraury edition of the Broadwater Medical Centre (BMC) Newsletter. Febraury is National Heart Health month. According to to World Health Organisation (WHO) cardiovascular disease is the world's number one cause of death, killing over 17 million people every year.

5 Facts about the human heart:

  • In a day, the heart beats around 100,000 times and pumps around 1.5 gallons of blood per minute.
  • Apart from the cornea, every cell in the human body gets blood from the heart.
  • There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. That's enough to go around the world twice.
  • The average heartbeat of a woman is about 8 beats a minute faster than a man's heartbeat.
  • An adults heart is about the size of two hands clasped together. A child's heart is about the size of a fist.

Ways to improve your heart health:

  • Eat a healthy, balanced diet.
  • Be more physically active. Parkrun is a good way to get started. You can walk, jog or run every Saturday morning at 9am, click here for more details.
  • Keep to a healthy weight - please speak to a pharmacist or nurse for advice.
  • Giive up smoking - you can get help and support to give up from the local community pharmacies, online or via the NS Quit Smoking app.
  • Reduce your alcohol consumption - it is not advised to drink more than 14 units per week and these units should be spread over 3 days or more.
  • Keep your blood pressure under control. You can buy machines to use at home or we have a machine in our waiting room for all patients to use when needed.
  • Keep your diabetes under control. People with diabetes have a greater chance of developing Chronic Heart Disease.

Surgery Training Afternoons

In order to keep our teams up to date we try to have afternoons when we close in order to provide protected learning time. However, due to the current demand from the winter we are cancelling our planned Febraury session in order to provide the most availability along with all surgeries in Worthing. Therefore there are no planned closed afternoons at Broadwater Medical Centre in February and March 2023.

Coming in March's Newsletter:

A Day in the Life of our Paramedic Practitioners

Appointment Data January 2023

  • We saw 3562 patients face to face during January
  • We had 5618 patient contact during January
  • We had 210 wasted appointments during January

If you cannot attend your appointment for any reason, please let us know so someone else can have the appointment. Any wasted appointments means patients wait even longer for their medical help.

 

A Day in the Life of Our Patient Services Team

There is a Stereotype of GP receptionists as dragons behind a desk unsmiling individuals with a rude manner and apparent determination to be anything but helpful whilst wanting to know all about your private business.

"Their detached manner is not intended to intimidate or belittle patients; it's actually a form of protection, to help them avoid emotional burnout"

The following was a common scenario:

A queue of 6 or more people wait to speak to the receptionist on the other side of the glass window. The first, an elderly woman tearfully registering the death of her husband. Next, a smiling mum, here for her bouncing baby son's check up. Meanwhile, the phone is constantly ringing, and the receptionist knows that she needs to answer the phone to a patient, who is likely to be unwell and, quite probably, annoyed about having to wait so long. In the space of seconds, the receptionist is faced with sorrow, happiness and anger. Here at Broadwater, our Patient Service Advisors aim to be as helpful and cheerful as they possibly can be.

The surgery has a complement of 14 receptionists.

A single Patient Service Advisor at Broadwater will see and assist approximately 80 people per day face to face. When not on the front desk, the team will be working in the office receiving around 200+ calls, which come in continuously throughout the day.In between this, the team will do tasks and complete around 400+ prescription requests daily.

To help us ensure that we see as many patients as possible we have now moved to a triage service. When a patient calls for an appointment, the Patient Service Advisor will ask "How may I help you?" at this point, they will ask for the symptoms and when it stared. This information is important to us as it allows the clinical team to have some insight immediately as to the urgency of the call. The details are then entered and electronically picked up by the clinical team, who will then start the journey as to how quickly the patient needs to be assessed. Please support our team with this information as it allows for a prompt and efficient service. Our aim is to provide ultimate patient care at all times.

If the Patient Service Advisor is unable to answer your concerns you may ask to speak to one of the management team. We are always happy to work with patients to identify areas of improvement and resolve problems. Please let us know when we are providing you with a good service. It is encouraging when we hear positive feedback and it inspires us.

The surgery supports the government's 'Zero Tolerance' policy and we will not tolerate slamming down phones, sarcastic tone, aggression, swearing, inappropriate demeanour or any other kind of unacceptable behaviour towards staff or other persons present on the premises. Patients are given warning and/or removed from the surgery list immediately.

They reserve the right to go about their work without fear of inappropriate behaviour. Whilst we understand that patients may, on occasions, wish to raise complaints, concerns or feel frustrated there is a correct and appropriate way to raise these.

Read January's Newsletter here.

Published: Feb 1, 2023