News:

 

Thank you for tolerating the disruption caused by our recent building work. The work to install a new lift, renovated patient toilets and four new upstairs consulting rooms is nearly complete.

Dr Iona Heath retired from the practice in January of this year. We will all miss her hugely and wish her well in her new role as President of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

We are continuing our attempts at improving access to our appointments.

In order to improve your access to a GP, we will now be offerring routine appointments from 7.30am on some mornings and from 9am to 12am on some Saturday mornings. 

Help us to keep your clinical record up to date. Please click on the "clinical record" link at the bottom of this page to update us.

Our new "self check area" is now open. Appointments are no longer needed for routine BP checks. We now have a dedicated area in the waiting room eqipped with state of the art electronic equipment with which to measure your own BP.  Receptionists will be on hand to assist you.  Height and weight can also be checked.

The Minor AilmenScheme can enable you to get prompt treatment for a range of minor health problems. For further details see the link under Practice Information.

Training/Teaching

Study_booksThe practice is regularly involved in teaching medical students, mostly from The  Royal Free and University College Hospital Medical School. They are able to learn a great deal by sitting in on consultations and by accompanying doctors and other team members on visits.  You may be asked if a medical student can ask you some questions prior to your consultation with the GP.  This is an extremely useful learning and teaching experience for the Student.  Most of our medical students are in the fourth year of their training although we do occasionally have medical students from other years of their course.

Your permission will always be asked if a medical student is to be present during your consultation. You are of course free to decline and doing so would not affect the care that you get in any way.

As well as teaching undergradualte medical students, The Caversham Practice also participates in the education and training of more senior doctors.  All of the Partners in the practice are GP trainers and participate in the training of GP Registrars.  A GP registrar is a qualified doctor who has decided thet he/she would like to pursue a caeer in General Practice.  GP Training currently takes approximately 3 years  and involves a rotation through various hospital based specialties as well as a period of approximately one year in a training practice where te doctor can work as a GP in a training environment.  Both GP Registars and GP Trainers are occasionally asked to video their consultations in order to improve aspects of their consultation technique.  You will always be asked in advance if your consultation is scheduled to be recorded and are free to decline if you would find this off-putting.

Recently qualified doctors in the foundation years of their training are also sometimes offerred the opportunity to spend some time (usually four months) working as a GP as part of a rotation between different posts.  These so called foundation year doctors (FY2 doctors) have so far proved to be enthusiastic and invaluable colleagues.  We hope we have managed to persuade some of them of the merits of a career in General Practice!