About Our Surgery

Meet The Team

Our practice is led by three experienced GP Partners, supported by four salaried GPs and five Nurse Practitioners. Alongside them is our wider team of practice nurses, healthcare assistants, pharmacists and administrative staff.

General Practitioners

Dr Geoff Walker

Senior Partner

Dr Melanie Pritchard

Partner

Dr Gomathy Umashankar

Partner

Dr Ayesha Sattar

Salaried GP

Dr Esosa Osamwonyi

Salaried GP

Dr Oladimeji Ikuyinminu

Salaried GP

Dr Fahmida Rashid

Salaried GP

Nurse Practitioners

Dawn Carruthers

Nurse Practitioner

Lesley Carr

Nurse Practitioner

Beth Bartels

Nurse Practitioner

Claire Scott

Nurse Practitioner

Zoe Whensley

Nurse Practitioner

Nurses & Healthcare Assistants

Alison Bruce

Lead Nurse

Sian Dryburgh

Long-term Condition Nurse

Jade Anderson

Long-term Condition Nurse

Mary-Anne Torr

Long-term Condition Nurse

Lesley Maughan

Treatment Room Nurse

Emma Brown

Treatment Room Nurse

Georgia Hewitt

Treatment Room Nurse

Naomi Corrigan

Registered Nurse Associate

Claire Rielly

Trainee Nurse Associate

Jean Briggs

Healthcare Assistant

Linda Tomlinson

Healthcare Assistant

Chris Hall

Healthcare Assistant

Tracy Douthwaite

Healthcare Assistant

Pharmacists

Shelley Calkin

Pharmacist

Shauna Ahmed

Pharmacist

Christopher Ruddick

Pharmacist

The surgery works in partnership with local and NHS service providers and groups.

Letters to Patients

Patient Participation Group

Online Services

New Patient Registrations

Accessing Someone Else’s Information

Facilities

Practice Policies

Call recording Policy

Telephone Call Recording Policy

Introduction

This policy outlines the practice’s call recording process. The purpose of call recording is to provide a record of incoming and outgoing calls which can:

Identify practice staff training needs
Protect practice staff from nuisance or abusive calls
Establish facts relating to incoming/outgoing calls made (e.g. complaints)
Identify any issues in practice processes with a view to improving them

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to ensure that call recording is managed in line with DPA & Data Retention requirements. This will generally involve the recording of telephone conversations which is subject to the Telecommunications Act 1984.

The practice will make every reasonable effort to advise callers that their call may be recorded and for what purpose the recording may be used. This will normally be via the practice telephone message, practice website and a poster displayed in each waiting room.

Recordings are held securely for 365 days by the telephone provider and at expiry will be securely deleted by the provider.

All incoming and outbound calls are recorded.

Scope

This policy applies to all practice staff including any contracted or temporary workers.

All calls including:

All external incoming calls
All external outgoing calls made by practice staff
All internal incoming and outgoing calls made by the practice staff

Monitoring of the call recordings will be undertaken by the practice manager as required. Any playback of recordings will take place in a private setting and where applicable, individuals should be given the opportunity to listen to the relevant recordings to receive feedback and developmental support. All recordings and call recording equipment will be stored securely, and access to these should be controlled and managed by practice manager.

Confidentiality

The Data Protection Act allows access to information that is held about patients and their personal data. This includes recorded telephone calls. Recordings should be stored in such a way that will enable easy access to the information relating to one or more individuals.

Requests for copies of telephone conversations can be made under the Data Protection Act as a “Subject Access Request”. This must be done in writing and after assessing whether the information can be released, the requestor can be invited to the practice premises to hear the recording.

If there is a request from an external body relating to the detection or prevention of a crime (e.g. police), then requests for information should be directed to the practice manager to carry out the request for the recording

Telephone calls for the practice are routinely recorded for the following purposes.

To ensure practice staff act in compliance with procedures
To ensure quality control
Training, monitoring, and service improvement
Prevention of crime, misuse, and the protection of staff.

Complaints Procedure

Our aim is to provide the highest level of care for all our patients. We will always be willing to hear if there is any way that you think that we can improve the service we provide.

Making a complaint

If you have any complaints or concerns about the service that you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working for this practice, please let us know.

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out in this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible – ideally within a matter of days or at most a few weeks – because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint within 12 months of the incident.

Our Practice Manager Tracey Wilkinson will be pleased to deal with any complaint. She will explain the procedure to you and make sure that your concerns are dealt with promptly.

You can make your complaint:

In Person – ask to speak to the Assistant Practice Manager Karen Stokoe.
In Writing – some complaints may be easier to explain in writing – please give as much information as you can , dates, timelines and names etc. then send your complaint to the practice or email it in at pease.way@nhs.net for the attention of the Practice Manager Tracey Wilkinson.

What we shall do

Our complaints procedure is designed to make sure that we settle any complaints as quickly as possible.

If you make your complaint orally this should be resolved satisfactorily at the time of the complaint or within one working day. In cases where a complaint spans primary care & secondary care, or health & social care, we will co-operate with other providers.

If your complaint is made in writing we shall acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days. We shall then be in a position to discuss how your complaint will be handled and to agree an appropriate timescale for a response. You will be informed of any delays. All complaints will be dealt with as soon as possible.

When we look into your complaint, we aim to:

Find out what happened and what went wrong
Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this
Make sure you receive an apology, where appropriate
Identify what we can do to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. We do this by changing practice protocols and by making improvements using updates in training.

At the end of the investigation your complaint will be discussed with you in detail, either in person or in writing.

If the investigation of your complaint identifies an adverse incident this will be properly reported as required and discussed at a multidisciplinary meeting where learning points will be shared.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of medical confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have his or her permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this.

Patients over the age of 16 should normally complain themselves. Children under this age may complain if they are capable of doing so.

What you can do next

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe that this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and the opportunity to improve our practice.

Complainants who are dissatisfied with our response can refer their complaint to the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman on 0345 015 4033.

Other sources of help in making a complaint are:

ICAS (The Independent Complaints Advocacy Service – from April 1st 2013 individual local authorities have a legal duty to organise independent advocacy services to provide support for people who are making, or intend on making a complaint about their NHS care or treatment.

Local Citizens Advice Bureau – Whose contact details can be obtained by calling 0300 323 1001 – Patient Self-referral line (Mon-Fri 9am – 1pm only).

The practice will deal with all complaints using the “Principles of Good Complaint Handling” as recommended by the Health Service Ombudsman. The principles are:

Getting it right
Being patient focused
Being open and accountable
Acting fairly and proportionately
Putting things right
Seeking continuous improvement

Patients can also receive advice and advocacy, from both Healthwatch County Durham and NE Independent Complaints Advocacy .

County Durham – Home | Healthwatch Countydurham

Tel: 0800 3047039

Email: healthwatchcountydurham@pcp.uk.net

NE NHS Independent Advocacy Service – North East ICA – Carers Federation

Tel: 0808 802 3000

Email: ica@carersfederation.co.uk

Confidentiality

Confidential patient data will be shared within the practice health care team and with other health care professionals to whom you are referred for care. For the essential purpose of clinical audit, your data may be used by those clinical teams providing your care.

Confidential patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of public health and audit, research, the provision of health care services, teaching and training. Data disclosed will be kept to the minimum required to serve the purpose and if possible will be anonymised before disclosure.

Confidential and identifiable patient information will not be disclosed otherwise without explicit consent, unless:

it is matter of life and death or serious harm to you or to another individual
it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so
there is a legal obligation

In all of these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve the purpose may be revealed to someone with legal entitlement to access the data for that purpose.

All individuals with access to your data have a professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality. If you are concerned about any situation in which your confidential data may be involved, further information is available from the practice manager. You are entitled to register an objection, which will be respected if this is possible.

GP Earnings

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised and the required disclosure is shown below.

However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice and should not be used to for any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparisons with other practices.

The average earnings for GPs working in Pease Way Medical Centre in the last financial year ending in 2023/24 was £58,840 before taxation and National Insurance. This is for 4 part time GPs and 2 Locums who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.

Rights and Responsibilities of Patient

We expect patients to attend their appointments on time or give the practice adequate notice that they wish to cancel. Persistent non-attenders may be removed from the practice list.

If more than one member of the family needs to be seen please make sure that this is known at the time of making an appointment.

Courtesy must be shown to all the staff at the practice at all times.

Do not expect non-emergency requests to be dealt with immediately, e.g. repeat prescriptions need 48 hours advance notice no matter what the circumstances.

Violent or Abusive Behaviour and Acts of Violence