Christmas & New Year message

From Dr Katrina Young, senior partner, St Mary’s Surgery

As 2022 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.

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 just over a year since we moved into our temporary accommodation on the Princess of Wales Hospital site where our clinical team are based and I would like to thank all our staff and patients for being so supportive with the move. We have managed to maintain all our usual services. Although we have one extra room we are still cramped for space and are so looking forward to moving back to 37 St Mary’s Street in the New Year.

Some of you may have seen there is a large pile of soil and rubble from the groundworks by the portacabins – if any local farmers or local developers would like to remove it, if they have a hole or ditch to fill in, please do contact me. We would be extremely grateful as it is no longer required for landscaping when the portacabins are removed.

The surgery development is progressing well and we are hoping we will not be troubled with bad weather in the next couple of months so we can get our electrical supply in and hopefully no further delays with materials, in particular the lifts, which will allow access to the first and second floors for those unable to use stairs. If all goes according to plan we hope to be back at 37 St Mary’s Street before Easter 2023.

2022 has seen changes to our clinical teams here at St Mary’s. We were sorry that Dr Chris McDonald and Advanced Nurse Practitioner Kym Birch retired earlier this year and we wish them both a happy and healthy retirement. Dr Lucy Melhuish has sadly recently left the practice after working here for 8 years.

We would like to thank her for her excellent medical care to her patients and we wish her all the best for the future. We were delighted to have Dr Rahul Parnaik and Dr Emma Smith join the clinical team at the start of the year. Our congratulations go to Dr Becky Ward on the arrival of her second child who is currently on shared maternity leave and we look forward to her return in April 2023. We also welcome Katy Draper who is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Jake Fretwell an Advanced Clinical Practitioner- they both have excellent clinical skills and are independent prescribers and are a great addition to the clinical team.

Our PCN medicines management team has also expanded and our patients will receive support with their medication from our clinical pharmacists Vikki Marquiss and Anam Baksh and medicines technician Louise Cooper.

We’ve seen our patient numbers continue to grow this year and now have over 16,400 patients registered with us. We expect this trend to continue as Ely’s new housing developments are progressing. We are continuing to actively recruit staff to assist us in caring for our patients.

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