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Ashcroft Surgery really appreciates you helping us out today. As we employ a number of locums it is essential that we try and synchronise what we all do for the sake of patient safety. This page has been created to give you some information about our surgery and how various systems and processes work here. We hope you will find this page useful. Please feel free to email us for any additions, ammendments or other suggestions. Past locums have often commented on how we are Ashcroft Surgery are friendly and helpful – so, if you are ever unsure about something, please don’t hesitate to ask one of our doctors, nurses or reception team.
We all hope that you enjoy working with us.
Claire Revitt, Practice Manager
Induction
The manager or one of the admin staff will try to meet you before starting your first session and cover the following points with you. Therefore, please try and be at site 20 minutes before you start and we will go through this stuff with you.
- We all refer to each other by first names.
- Tea/Coffee – Drinks can be made at the downstairs kitchen or upstairs staff room – tea, coffee, cold water, all provided with milk in the fridge. If you want to heat up food in a toaster or microwave – then these are located in the staff room upstairs.
- Toilets – 2 in the waiting room, 2 towards the end of the doctors rooms corridor, 1 in nurses corridor, 2 pairs on the upstairs admin corridor.
- Window shutters – if closed open with rocker switch – only keep depressed until shutter reaches the top or windowsill level.
- Health & Safety – you also have a responsibility to flag up to us anything that you see and think is a safety risk. We are responsible to assess it and sort it.
- Confidentiality – Confidential waste must be put in the grey wooden units in the post room or by the fire door near it – this gets shredded every 4 weeks. You must not divulge any patient identifiable information to a 3rd party without acceptable reason – so take care with any patient information.
- Infection control: There is a disinfectant soap dispenser in each consulting room (near the sink). In addition, there are alcohol gel dispensers on the desk of each consulting room, in the doctors’ corridor, the waiting room, and the entrance door to the building. Hand washing guides are also located at these points.
- Waste – all glass and food waste must go into a black bin bagged bin located in kitchen area. Clinical waste goes in the orange bagged clinical waste bin. Sharps go in the sharps bin in each room. Other (NON-CONFIDENTIAL) waste into the clear bagged waste bin – goes direct for recycling.
- Personal belongings: The practice cannot take any responsibility for your personal belongs. Please ask a member of reception if you need to lock an item away. Lockers are available upstairs in our library. Please ensure the key is left in the door when you leave. When you are not in your consulting room, please make sure nothing of value is left in there. The occaisional patient has been known to slip in take take something. Please be warned.
When you have finished your surgery
- Close down the PC and take your smartcard with you.
- Please take all plates and cups back to the kitchen area and leave near the dishwasher.
- Please close any windows including the shutter/blind.
- Let a member of staff know you are leaving (and for your protection, especially if you are then going on a home visit).
If you need to cancel a session
If you cannot attend – you must inform the surgery – 01274 615 338 – preferably at the earliest opportunity. If on the day, then please ring between 7:45-8am on the surgery day.
Referrals
If you are familiar with Choose and Book, by all means do them that way – don’t forget to send an accompanying digital referral letter. If you are not familiar with Choose and Book, then please either
- dictate the letter and our secretary (Patricia Hornsby) will type it up (but bear in mind that there may be a delay of 5 days until the letter is typed and sent). Ask one of our reception team for a tape recorder if you need one – you must clearly state the patient’s name, date of birth, address and the specialty to which the referral is to be sent. It would be helpful if you could also write a list of patient name’s on the front of the envelope into which you will put the recorded tape. or
- type the letter into a SystmOne task and send to Patricia Hornsby and she can then copy and paste the details into a letter.
Investigations
- For blood tests this is easy. Write in the clinical record what blood tests you want and then ask the patient to book an appointment with the nurse – but tell them when they should do this (we usually say within 2 weeks for non-urgent stuff). Also advise patients to come back 2 weeks after they have had blood taken to discuss the results.
- For other investigations like chest x-rays, ultrasounds, and other types of scan – you must fill out the corresponding form. These are all available on SystmOne – RIGHT click on the Referrals tab and then choose ‘Create new Word referral’.
Fast-tracks
Please use Choose and Book if you are familiar with the system but ensure you send an accompanying digital fast-track form. Otherwise type up the letter on the appropriate electronic fast track form, print it off and hand it to a reception staff member stating clearly that this is an urgent fast track form which needs to be faxed off and state which specialty. (In SystmOne, for the fast-track form right click Referrals and then select new Word referral and then select appropriate fast-track letter)
To whom it may concern letters
The surgery does make a charge for these. The charge is normally £15. So please if in doubt ask at reception and the admin staff will be able to help. Dictate the letter for our secretary Patricia Hornsby to type up.
Fire and safety
Before starting your session, please make yourself aware of the building layout and escape routes. Ask one of our staff members to show you if you are unsure. If you hear the alarm…..
- Take patients, relatives etc. with you
- Make immediate exit via a fire door
- Exits are: – at the bottom of each stairs, the front entrance door you will have entered by, past the post room, near the end of the nurse’s corridor.
- Meet at top of staff car park – which is toward our site exit
- Make yourself know to one of the staff.
- Only use extinguishers to make your escape. Smaller black top with black cone – only for electrical fires – turn off electric supply if safe to do so – The larger cream top one for rest so NOT electrical fires.