Measles
Measles is highly contagious, but knowing the symptoms is the first step to protection. Visit
nhs.uk/measles.
Make sure your child is up to date with their MMR vaccination to give them the best protection against becoming seriously unwell. Visit
nhs.uk/MMRIf you think your child has measles, contact NHS 111 or your GP practice by telephone or online, but to help prevent the virus spreading please do not attend in person any kind of healthcare setting
including your GP practice unless requested to by a healthcare professional.
Video credit - Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust.
Booking link for hospital bloods
If you need to book a blood test at Grantham, Lincoln or Boston hospital please follow the instructions as detailed in the below link:
Blood tests (Phlebotomy) - United Lincolnshire Hospitals (ulh.nhs.uk)
Enhanced Access appointments
We are pleased to be able to offer our patients, as part of Grantham Network PCN, access to routine, pre-booked appointments at evenings and weekends. These are referred to as Enhanced Access appointments. The service is being delivered at our practices on a rotational basis on behalf of the PCN and is available for any patient who is registered at any of the practices below:
Colsterworth Surgery, Long Bennington Surgery, Market Cross Surgery, St Johns Medical Centre, St Peters Hill Surgery, Swingbridge Surgery, The Glenside Country Practice, The Harrowby Lane Surgery, The Welby Practice, Vine Street Surgery.
Enhanced Access hours are between 6.30pm-8pm weekdays and 9am-5pm on Saturdays. We also offer some early morning appointments starting at 7am
Appointments are for pre-bookable, non-urgent consultations (e.g., chronic illness, asthma checks, and blood pressure checks) with GPs, ANPs, Nurses, Physios and Health Care Assistants. Please note, the enhanced access service is not a walk-in service.
As your registered practice will not be physically open during these hours, patients will be unable to have general queries answered or dealt with during enhanced access opening times. Please be aware, your appointment may be a telephone call, video call or a face-to-face appointment, you will be advised at the time of booking.
When booking an appointment, you will need to consent to a Consulting Clinician that may not be your own GP viewing and updating your health record.
To arrange an appointment, please contact your practice.
For urgent matters at evenings, weekends and bank holidays, patients will continue to access the GP Out of Hours Services at Lincoln County Hospital via NHS 111.
askmyGP - available from 8am
From Monday 12th June askmyGP will be switched on from 8am onwards. We hope this will help to avoid the early morning 'rush' to submit a request before we reach capacity for the day. We also hope that this will help to extend the length of time the system is open for requests giving our patient's more time throughout the day to access help or advice from one of our clinicians or other members of staff.
We understand that some of our patient's struggle to access askmyGP but please remember that if you do not have online access or have difficulties with this please phone the Surgery and we can help you.
Thank you for your ongoing understanding and support.
Our Practice Code of Conduct
Click here to view
Medications in Flying
Use of Benzodiazepines (and related medications) for flying
Benzodiazepines (e.g. Diazepam/ Lorazepam/Temazepam/Alprazolam/ Clonazepam) are drugs which have been in use since the 1960s for treatment of a wide range of conditions including alcohol withdrawal, agitation and restlessness, anxiety, epilepsy and seizures, neurological disorders. muscle spasms, psychiatric disorders and sleep disturbance
Initial use of benzodiazepines, including the well-known Diazepam also known as ‘Valium’, was enthusiastic and they were hailed as a wonder drug. However, it became increasingly clear that, as well as having short term deleterious effects on memory, co-ordination, concentration and reaction times, they were also addictive if used for a long time, with withdrawal leading to fits, hallucinations, agitation and confusion, and further had long-term effects on cognition and balance. Unfortunately benzodiazepines have also become a widely used drug of abuse since they first came on the market. Because of these reasons the use of benzodiazepines has been a lot more controlled around the world since the 1980-90s, especially in the UK. Diazepam in the UK is a Class C/Schedule IV controlled drug. The following short guide outlines the issues surrounding its use with regards to flying and why the surgery no longer prescribes such medications for this purpose.
People often come to us requesting the doctor or nurse to prescribe diazepam for fear of flying or assist with sleep during flights. Diazepam is a sedative, which means it makes you sleepy and more relaxed. There are a number of very good reasons why prescribing this drug is not recommended.
- According to the prescribing guidelines doctors follow (British National Formulary) diazepam is contraindicated (not allowed) in treating phobic states.[i] It also states that “the use of benzodiazepines to treat short-term ‘mild’ anxiety is inappropriate.”[ii] Your doctor would be taking a significant legal risk by prescribing against these guidelines. They are only licensed short term for a crisis in generalised anxiety. If this is the case, you should be getting proper care and support for your mental health and not going on a flight.
- NICE guidelines suggest that medication should not be used for mild and self-limiting mental health disorders[iii]. In more significant anxiety related states, benzodiazepines, sedating antihistamines or antipsychotics should not be prescribed. Benzodiazepines are only advised for the short term use for a crisis in generalised anxiety disorder in which case they are not fit to fly. Fear of flying in isolation is not a generalised anxiety disorder.
- Although plane emergencies are a rare occurrence there are concerns about reduced awareness and reaction times for patients taking Diazepam which could pose a significant risk of not being able to react in a manner which could save their life in the event of an emergency on board necessitating evacuation.
- The use of such sedative drugs can make you fall asleep, however when you do sleep it is an unnatural non-REM sleep. This means you won’t move around as much as during natural sleep. This can cause you to be at an increased risk of developing a blood clot (Deep Vein Thrombosis - DVT) in the leg or even the lungs. Blood clots are very dangerous and can even prove fatal. This risk is even greater if your flight is greater than 4 hours, the amount of time which has been shown to increase the risk of developing DVT whether in an aeroplane or elsewhere.
- Whilst most people find Diazepam sedating, a small number have paradoxical agitation and aggression. They can also cause disinhibition and lead you to behave in a way that you would not normally which can pose a risk on the plane. This could impact on your safety as well as that of other passengers and could also get you into trouble with the law. A similar effect can be seen with alcohol, which has led to people being removed from flights.
- A study published in 1997 from the Stanford University School of Medicine[iv] showed that there is evidence use of Benzodiazepines stops the normal adjustment response that would gradually lessen anxiety over time and therefore perpetuates and may increase anxiety in the long term, especially if used repeatedly.
- Diazepam and similar controlled drugs are illegal in a number of countries[v]. They may be confiscated or you may find yourself in trouble with the police. The passenger may also need to use a different strategy for the homeward bound journey and/or other legs of the journey.
- Diazepam stays in your system for quite a while. If your job requires you to submit to random drug testing you may fail this having taken diazepam.
- It is important to declare all medical conditions and medications you take to your travel insurer. If not, there is a risk of nullifying any insurance policy you may have.
Given the above we will no longer be providing Diazepam or similar drugs for flight anxiety and instead suggest the below aviation industry recommended flight anxiety courses.
Flight anxiety does not come under the remit of General Medical Services as defined in the GP contract and so we are not obliged to prescribe for this. Patients who still wish to take benzodiazepines for flight anxiety are advised to consult with a private GP or travel clinic.
For further information:
https://thefearofflying.com/programs/fly-and-be-calm/
https://www.fearlessflyer.easyjet.com/
https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-assistance/flying-with-confidence
https://www.flyingwithoutfear.com/
[i] British National Formulary; Diazepam - https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/diazepam.html
[ii] British National Formulary; Hypnotics and anxiolytics - https://bnf.nice.org.uk/treatment-summary/hypnotics-and-anxiolytics.html
[iii] Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults: management. NICE Clinical guideline [CG113] Published date: January 2011 Last updated: July 2019 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113
[iv] Acute and delayed effects of Alprazolam on flight phobics during exposure. Behav Res Ther. 1997 Sep;35(9):831-41
Cervical Screening
It's really important that if you are due your cervical smear test that you contact the surgery at your earliest convenience to book your appointment. Please watch the video below for some more information on this from Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust:
DVLA Requests from GP's
Section 88 of the Road Traffic Act 1988
During COVID many drivers licences have expired and the DVLA gave extensions so that they could continue to drive and work. For many drivers though this extension is coming to an end. Drivers are now being told by DVLA to ask their GP if they are "fit to drive" so that they can continue to drive under Section 88 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (RTA 1988).
As most GPs are not confident to advise patients whether or not they are fit to drive, our Practice Policy is to only provide factual information for the DVLA, about a patients health so that the DVLA expert medical advisers can decide upon fitness and suitability for renewal of licences. We will not offer an opinion as to whether a patient is fit to drive or not, and hope that you can understand and accept our position on this subject.
General Practice Date for Planning and Research: GP Practice Privacy Notice
Under data protection law we must tell you about how we use your personal information. This includes the personal information that we share with other organisations and why we do so. Our main GP practice privacy notice is on our website. This additional privacy notice provides details about the personal information that we are sharing with NHS Digital for its General Practice Data for Planning and Research data collection.
NHS Digital is part of the NHS. It collects, analyses, publishes and shares data to improve everyone’s health and care. Read more about NHS Digital.
We use the term patient data to refer to personal information in the rest of this notice.
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/gp-privacy-notice
Opting out
If you don’t want your identifiable patient data (personally identifiable data in the diagram above) to be shared for purposes except for your own care, you can opt-out by registering a Type 1 Opt-out or a National Data Opt-out, or both. These opt-outs are different and they are explained in more detail in the above links. Your individual care will not be affected if you opt out using either option.
Opt Out Form: Type 1 Opt Out
Important info re Face Coverings
From 19th July 2021, we will continue to ask you to wear a face covering when you come into the practice, and to follow the social distancing and hand sanitising measures that have been in place throughout the pandemic.
We have vulnerable patients and we have to ensure that we continue to protect people as best as we can.
Thank you for your continued understanding and support.
We're recruiting!
See our job vacancies section for more information.
AskMyGP - How it works! Click here for more info
The easiest and fastest way to get any kind of help is with askmyGP. It saves us time too, so please help us to help you.
Available 24/7 - we respond in working hours, 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday
We can usually get back to you within the hour, and will see you same day if needed.
All our registered patients are welcome, parents and carers on behalf of patients too.
You can name a GP if you wish (so long as they are working today)
You may prefer a message, telephone, video or face to face response
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