St Mary’s Surgery Staff and Project Updates
There are have been a few changes over the summer holidays. At the end of July we said goodbye to our GP registrars Dr Xuan Nguyen and Dr Aaron Punnen and in August were pleased to welcome Dr Hazal Ozkan and Dr Yash Arora.
Dr Ute Semrau-Boughton and Dr Sam Rayner are their respective trainers
Dr Hazal Ozkan graduated from Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) in 2021. As part of her post-graduate training, she completed 2 years of Foundation Training at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, having done rotations in various specialties (including Elderly medicine, General surgery, Acute medicine, A&E, Obstetrics and Gynaecology). She is now in Cambridge GPSTR Programme, training to become a GP. The first 6 months of her training will be at St Mary’s Surgery.
Dr Yash Arora graduated from Norwich Medical School in 2021, and had spent the last two years working in hospitals in Norwich and King’s Lynn before starting GP training in Cambridge this year. He will be at St Mary’s Surgery for 6 months.
From September we will be welcoming various groups of medical students from Cambridge University medical school and they will be mentored by Dr Ben Miller with assistance from Dr Emma Smith and Dr Becky Ward. We also have a student nurse with us who is studying at Anglian Ruskin University and her mentors are Practice Nurses, Tania Ramos de Barros and Dan Holmes.
It is a great opportunity for these students to get experience in general practice and we would like to thank our patients in anticipation for allowing the students to observe and participate in their medical care.
We also have some new faces in Dispensary and we are pleased to welcome Hannah Brumby and Clare Cowell and in Patient Services Team we welcome Hannah Dobson, Kim Saul, Alexander Hayter and Chloe Thompson. They all bring valuable experience from their previous roles and it is great to have them working with us at ‘Team St Mary’s’.
With the retirement of Maxine Swinden from Patient Services and Nurse Prescriber Lauren Bowers-Broadley having temporarily reduced her working hours whilst she is undergoing hospital treatment we are growing our diabetes clinical and management team. Health Care Assistant Tara Green and Practice Nurse Amy Casburn are undertaking further training in diabetes and you may well get a phone call from Sarah Garner in Patient Services reminding you to book for your diabetic review.
We are currently working on a project looking at patients’ cardiovascular risk and trying to reduce people’s chances of having a heart attack and stroke. Statins have been around for a long time and are still the first line treatment choice but we know that some patients are not able to tolerate them and we will be offering these patients an alternative lipid lowering therapy.
The team heading up this project are Lou Cooper our PCN pharmacy technician, Andrea Fisher our medicines technician, Health Care Assistant Naomi Roberts and Patient Services Team member Felicity Wootton who are involved with the NHS health checks and results.
We are a clinical research active practice and there are a number of studies ongoing at present which eligible patients will be invited to participate in. We would like to thank all patients who do get involved in research as it helps improve medical care for our future generations.
I would like to mention out forthcoming Flu and Covid vaccination campaign which will be held at St Mary’s Surgery this year and our planned weekend clinics will be held on Saturdays 23rd and 30th September and 7th October and Sundays 24th September and 1st October. The only Covid vaccination which is being supplied to us is the Pfizer bivalent vaccine which was used for the spring booster. Please protect yourselves and support the surgery by booking your appointments at the surgery. It is also helpful to advise us if you do not wish to have a vaccine so we can update your medical records.
Lastly from 1 September 2023, the Shingles vaccine programme is being offered to the following:
- healthy people aged 70 to 79 years who have not yet been vaccinated
- people aged 50 years and over with a severely weakened immune system
- healthy people aged 60 to 70 years will become eligible for the vaccine over the next 5 years, when they turn 65 or 70 years
You will remain eligible for the shingles vaccine until your 80th birthday, unless you have a weakened immune system; people with a severely weakened immune system remain eligible for vaccine. The sooner you have the vaccine, the earlier you will be protected.
For more information please see:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/shingles-vaccination/
We will be sending out text invites to eligible patients with a booking link of alternatively appointments can be booked via reception on 663434, option 1
Dr Katrina Young