The Blackthorn Buzz

Your Update from Blackthorn Medical Centre - January 2024

What's new for 2024?

As we part with 2023 and move into the 2024 we wish everyone all the very best for the coming year. There's a few new additions to the practice that were introduced in the latter part of 2023, so here's a little reminder...

Care Co-ordinators

Claire and Vanessa are Blackthorn Medical Centre's Care Coordinators. Claire and Vanessa both work full-time at Blackthorn Medical Centre.

What is the Care Co-ordinator's role?

Care Coordinator is a new, exciting varied role being integrated at the Blackthorn Medical Practice. The role involves working alongside the team of clinicians, receptionists, administrative staff and the wider team in order to co-ordinate patient care effectively.

Patients will be supported through personalised care plans and helping improve their health and wellbeing by treating them holistically, starting from what matters to them.

A Care Co-ordinator's role is to proactively identify and work with people, including the frail and elderly and those with long-term conditions, providing co-ordination and navigation of care and support across health and care services.

Our Patient Check-in system

After many months of inconsistent service from our patient checkin system we have had installed another system, which seems to be working well. So that you don't need to queue, please use the patient check-in service.

And we have a Health Pod

In the corner of our Waiting Area we have a Health Pod. This is a self-service pod for blood pressure readings and records for weight, height and other metrics.

Please be comfortable using the Health Pod... it is confidential and the information goes straight onto your records; this can be very useful in advance of your appointment.

Our Clinical Pharmacist (Leanne)

We have a clinical pharmacist, Leanne, working as part of the Blackthorn team, to help you get the best from your medicines.

As medication experts, clinical pharmacists can talk to you to about how well your medicines are working, and how well they are managing long-term conditions.

If you are having any problems with your medication like side effects, if you don't know how your medicines are helping you, or you are worried that your medicines might not work well together, our pharmacist can offer you a structured medication review, to go through everything in detail.

Finding out what matters to you, and how you would like your health conditions managed is important, and the pharmacist can help with this If you would like to have a medication review with our pharmacist, please book this through reception.

High blood pressure

Around 50% of heart attacks and strokes are associated with high blood pressure. When did you last have your blood pressure checked?

What causes high blood pressure?

There isn't always an explanation for the cause of high blood pressure, but most people develop it because of their diet, lifestyle or medical condition.

You may still be able to improve your blood pressure by making changes to your diet and being more active. Make a start by checking your blood pressure confidentially in our Health Pod (situated in the corner of the Waiting Area at the practice).

These can all increase your risk of getting high blood pressure:

• Too much alcohol
• Smoking
• Being overweight
• Lack of exercise
• Eating too much salt

Eligibility for the Shingles vaccine

We have had some concerns if patients are eligible for the Shingles vaccine. Unfortunately the advertising on national television is not clear and concerns have been raised with NHS England.

We only are able to vaccinate certain cohort of patients.

Learn more about the shingles vaccination programme

Alternatively please call our reception team who will be able to advise you if are eligible for this vaccine.

The Blackthorn website redesign

We've listened to feedback and looked at the analytics, so we've been working on a new, easy-to-use website.

The Blackthorn Café

The Blackthorn café sits at the heart of a project that helps vulnerable people in our community. It has been serving our local community for nearly forty years now, and those who know us will testify what a magical place it is.

Knowing how important good, whole foods are to our physical and mental wellbeing we make sure our menu is full of fresh and healthy foods, much of which is grown in our beautiful garden.

But the cafe is more than just a place to eat. It's where we come together as a community to share our stories, meet friends, and to celebrate how fortunate we are to work and share this space with the surrounding public.

So we hope those of you that already know of us will continue to support this valuable resource. And for those of you that don't know us yet, we hope you witl make the journey to visit us and find out for yourself what a hidden gem we are.

Megan - Café chef

Published: Feb 13, 2024