Levenside Medical Practice: Practice Profile

Levenside Medical Practice: Practice Profile

Dumbarton Health Centre, Station Road, Dumbarton G82 1 PW

Drs Pourghazi, Tervit, MacLean & Maxwell.

September 2014

GP Partner post - 7 sessions

Due to a reduction in hours of some of the current partners, in addition to the departure of our salaried GP earlier this year, we have decided to seek an additional partner to join our team. We are looking for a partner to work 7 sessions, ideally over 5 days.

Levenside Medical Practice is 1 of 6 practices in Dumbarton Health in Dumbarton. We are one of the 2 larger practices and have 6000 patients on our list. Most of our patients live in Dumbarton itself but we have some as far east as Milton and as far west as Balloch. We have a good range of age & social circumstances. The Health Centre is rented from the health board and we have made some alterations in recent years to create more working space. The centre itself has physiotherapy and an out-patient department.

There are currently 4 partners. Dr Saied Pourghazi (our Lead partner) works 7 sessions, Dr Chris Tervit will be working 6 sessions, Dr Fergus MacLean currently works 8 sessions but will be reducing to 7 sessions, and Dr Fiona Maxwell will be working 6 sessions.

We are a training practice and currently have a full-time GPST1. At times we may have up to 3 trainees. Our clinical team also includes our nurse practitioner, Mrs Gillian Bonar who is supported by Nurse Jackie Low. One of our receptionists has also been trained up as a Health Care Assistant (HCA) to do phlebotomy work and ‘Keep Well’ appointments.

We are well supported by our Practice Manager Mrs Amanda Brooks and Assistant Manager Mrs Joan Gray as well as excellent receptionists. We have a fantastic District Nursing team led by Jane Brown, and benefit from practice attached pharmacists and corporate Health Visiting team who are in the same building as us.

We moved from GPASS to EMIS in 2006 so are well used to both it and a paper-light working environment. We have our own website (www.levenside.co.uk) which continues to develop and have patients booking on-line appointments and doing on-line prescription ordering. Patients can access our regular newsletter through the website too.

We have always achieved almost maximum points for QOF and generally do not have a mad panic in March! We do not, however, see QOF as our aspiration marker- we have our own practice development plans and an evolving vision for our practice. We are increasingly becoming involved in helping the CHP to improve services for our population and continue to rank highly amongst our peers for our cost-effective prescribing locally. As well as helping our health board/ CHP colleagues we are always looking for ways to improve the patient experience of our services.

For many years we have been teaching 3rd year medical students and in Feb 2009 we had our first GPST. Since then we have grown in experience with Postgraduate training too. We have a strong interest in medical education and have always had good feedback from students and our GPSTs have consistently given us positive feedback. We have regular in-house educational meetings for all clinicians (& non-clinicians) to contribute & learn. We also have monthly multi-disciplinary meetings with District nurses and Health Visitors.

We have signed up to all enhanced services we have been offered including extended nurse and doctor hours. We currently do these, in coordination with other practices in the health centre, on a Tuesday evening. Our practice nurse, Gillian, does Nexplanon insertions. Dr Pourghazi does minor surgery and an in-house addictions clinic, with our drug worker, as well as coil insertions.

The partners each have areas of special interest /responsibility. Dr Pourghazi runs our addictions clinic (in-house) as well as a weekly addictions clinic at The Dumbarton Joint Hospital. He is our current Lead GP and is the nominal head of the practice for this current year after which we will re-elect our next Lead Partner from within the team. Dr Pourghazi also works sessions at the Vale of Leven Hospital as an Integrated Care Physician. Dr Tervit is the principal trainer and does a weekly Sexual Health clinic at The Sandyford Renfrewshire. He also teaches communications skills teaching to 3rd year medical students at Glasgow University and is also a non-exec LMC rep. Dr MacLean is our co-trainer and works one day each week at the Southern General Hospital in Bone Health. Dr Fiona Maxwell leads on our in-house research programmes and along with Dr Pourghazi organises our undergraduate teaching sessions. All the partners are involved in Locality and steering groups for various service developments which aim to improve services & care for our patients.