Christmas & New Year message

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Content archived 10 Feb 2022

From Dr Katrina Young, Senior Partner, St Mary’s Surgery 

As 2021 draws to a close I look back at what has been a busy and very challenging year for the surgery. 

With that in mind the Partners and I wish to thank each and every member of staff here at St Mary’s for all the hard work and dedication you’ve shown in continuing to provide excellent and outstanding patient care in what have been very difficult circumstances, especially over the past 12 months. Your individual and collective contributions have made all the difference and we very much appreciate this. 

The effect of this can be seen in the frequent positive feedback we receive from patients about the care they have been given. I want to take this opportunity to thank patients who take the time to contact us about the care they have received from the surgery. Your feedback means a lot to us. 

It’s now over a year since the GP practices in the Ely Primary Care Network began COVID vaccinations. While the vaccine programme will continue on into 2022, it’s been incredible to see over the past 12 months so many people coming forward for their primary vaccinations and now for their boosters. Indeed, a few weeks ago, we gave our 100,000th vaccination. 

All these people are not only helping to protect themselves from possible severe illness, but their families and our wider communities, too. 

I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all St Mary’s staff who have stepped up to help with the vaccine roll out. I know how hard you have all worked this year on top of your day-to-day jobs and how great you have been to respond to the constant pressures and logistical changes expected by the government and NHS England of all those involved with the booster campaign. 

2021 has seen changes to our clinical teams here at St Mary’s. Dr Becky Ward completed her training and joined our team of salaried doctors in August. Dr Rahul Parnaik joined the team in October and we look forward to Dr Emma Smith starting in January. Many of you may have seen Dr Narmin Siddique for face-to face-appointments and she will continue to do regular locum doctor sessions in the New Year. Carly Loop, our new Nurse Clinical Manager and Practice Nurse, Jennie Law, have joined our nurses’ team along with our new Healthcare Assistant Naomi Roberts. Within our Primary Care Network Staff we welcome Megan Drew as Clinical Pharmacist, Louise Cooper as Pharmacy Technician, Marzio Parapetto as health and wellbeing coach and Alex Theobald as physio.  

We also have valued members of staff who have left or retired over the year who I would like to thank for all their hard work and support during their time at St Mary’s, including Dr Andy Douglas, who has been a doctor at St Mary’s for over 35 years and Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Pippa Mitchell, who led our nursing team and was our diabetes care lead for 10 years. I am also sad to announce that Yvonne Biss, our clinical pharmacist, and Marie Heaps, who had various roles at the surgery over the last 23 years, are both retiring this week. All will be sadly missed.

We’ve seen our patient numbers continue to grow this year and now have over 16,000 patients registered with us. We expect this trend to continue as Ely’s housing stock rapidly expands; so it is timely that the final planning permission and funding for our building project has now been approved. 

We have now moved to our temporary surgery building up at the Princess of Wales site and the builders will shortly be starting the renovation and expansion work at 37 St Mary’s Street. 

This time next year we should be back in our brand new building and there is much to look forward to in that.  

 We wish all our patients a very merry Christmas and a very happy and healthy new year. 

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