Childhood Flu Nasal Vaccinations

Nasal flu for children born between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2023, aged 2 or 3, will be available at the practice from Wednesday 10 September 2025. Appointments are now available to book with one of our nursing staff.

Achool aged children (Reception to Year 11) will be offered their flu vaccine at school. 

If your child is not able to have the nasal flu due to a medical condition we will be able to offer an injected flu vaccine at the practice.

Full information about childrens' flu vaccine can be found:

Children's flu vaccine - NHS

Adult Flu Vaccinations

Most eligible people will be able to get their gflu vaccine from 1 October 2025. Pregnant women can have their flu vaccine from 1 September 2025.

We are expecting delivery of our flu vaccines very soon, as will be sending our link for patients to book their appointments, of course you can also contact reception in ususal way.

You can get the free NHS flu vaccine if you:

• are aged 65 or over (including those who will be 65 by 31 March 2026)
• have certain long-term health conditions
• are pregnant
• live in a care home
• are the main carer for an older or disabled person, or receive a carer's allowance
• live with someone who has a weakened immune system

Further information about this years campaign can be found: Flu vaccine - NHS

Our new Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) Imelda has now started at the practice. Although new to general practice, Imelda has many years experience working in the community and more recently for the Hospital at Home Service provided by HCT. Imelda is able to to undertake minor illness for patients 5 years old and above, complex wound care and long term conditons management. Imelda will be undertaking training in other areas such as womens health over the coming months and COPD. Imelda has qualified as an Emergency Care Practitioner and will be supporting the doctors with home visits in the near future.

Katie Moule our nursing assoicate, is well underway with her registered nursing course and is undertaking an apprenticeship with the Open University and once qualified will provide a full range of nursing appointments. Katie will be starting her final placement at the practice from mid-september until end November. You may see her sitting in with our other healthcare professionals or running her own clinics to develop her skills in practice nursing.

The NHS App gives you a simple and secure way to access a range of NHS services. You can download the NHS App on your smartphone or tablet via Google Play or App Store. You can also access the same services in a web browser by logging in through the NHS website Access your NHS account - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

You will be able to order repeat prescriptions, view you health record and test results (you must have online access activated at the practice first), book and amange appointments and referrals, register your organ donation decision, choose how you the NHS uses you data, use NHS 111 online to answer questions and get instant advice or medical help near you and access other NHS services.

About the NHS App - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

We thank our Patient Voices for their continued support with the monthly newsletters.

We are looking to recruit new members please see the  information on the newsletter or in the waiting room if you are interested.

We are pleased to announce that the new telephone system is live from Thursday 21 March 2024. This new system meets the standards required under the NHS and will also now have call recording enabled for all incoming and outgoing calls.

One of the most common complaints we receive is that patients don't want to or can't hold for long periods at our busiest time of the day. The new system will have a ringback facility which will enable you to select this option, retain your place in the queue without holding. This will address this issue but please be advised appointments levels will not change. Also note that the call back function is only available once the call queue reaches above 10, and is only available until 5pm. If you have not recevied a callback before the end of the working day you will need to call back as the system does not carry these over to the next day.

Other features will include improved management monitoring so that we can see extactly what is happening with our phone lines and adjust staff cover when required.

You can still cancel your appointments by leaving a clear mesage with your name, date of birth and appointment details by selecting option 2 from the menu. Although we have reduced wasted appointments from patients that do not attend, we still lose about 33 hours of clinical time a month, that is equal to approximaltey 198 appointments across the clinical team every month.

Our Patient Voices Group were involved in the selection of this system to get input form a patient perpesctive.

If you have any feedback on the system please let us know about your experience.

September 

National Blood Cancer Awareness Month   www.bloodwise.org.uk

Urology Awareness Month  www.theurologyfoundation.org 

Organ Donation Week – 18 – 24 September    www.organdonation.nhs.uk 

International FASD (Fetal Alcohol Sydrome & Fetal Alochol Spectrum Disorders) Awareness Day - 9 September   www.fasday.com  

Know Your Numbers Week – 8 - 14 September  www.bloodpressureuk.org/know-your-numbers 

National Eye Health Awareness Week – 23 - 29 Sept www.visionmatters.org.uk 

Sexual Health Week – 8 - 14 September www.brook.org.uk/shw 

October

Breast Cancer Awareness Month       www.wearitpink.org 

STOPTOBER Let's quit smoking  Quit smoking - Better Health - NHS 

World Mental Health Day - 10 October    www.mentalhealth.org.uk/get-involved

Global Handwashing Day - 15 October  www.globalhandwashing.org/global-handwashing-day 

World Osteoporosis Day - 20 October www.worldosteoporosisday.org 

International Brain Tumour Awareness Week - 25  October – 1 November  www.theibta.org/awareness-raising 

Appointment data is published for all GP practices in England. 

In summary The Garden City Practice delivered 5893 appointments in btween 27 Jan - 23 Feb 2025, an average of 466 appointments per 1000 registered paitents:

82.5% were face-to-face 

46.5% were same day appointments

44.5% were with a GP

2.1% Did not attend equal to 122 "lost" appointments which equates to 20 hours of lost appointment time

The practice is committed to increasing access to GP, Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Practice Nurse appointments in 2025, as well as utilising the Additional Roles such as Clinical Pharmacists, Physiotherapists, Social Prescribers and Mental Health Practitioners through the WGC Primary Care Network (PCN).

We would appreciate if patients provide brief information to Reception about the reason for your appointment when you contact the practice in order that you can be booked with the appropriate healthcare professional; the GP isn't always the best person to help.

Data up to 23 February 2025

Please also remember you can use NHS 111 online 111.nhs.uk  or call NHS 111 for urgent concerns, and 999 for serious emergencies.

For adults with mental health problems including depression and anxiety, you can refer yourself directly to the local wellbeing service, via their website.

If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, call this freephone number: 0800 6444 101.

HertsHelp: https://www.hertshelp.net/HertsHelp.aspx

Advice for childhood illnesses https://hertsvalleysccg.nhs.uk/application/files/1716/0941/0098/Help_your_Child_Stay_Well_This_Winter_FINAL.pdf 

We have a limited resources and limited number of appointments every day, please do not be rude to or shout at our receptionists; the practice will not tolerate offensive behavour or language and we will take steps to remove patients from our list if necessary.

Thank you very much for helping us all manage under these very difficult circumstances.

Patient data has been collected from practices for a number of years using the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES), the General Pracrice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) is replacing GPES and will help to support the planning and commissioning of health and care services, the development of health and care policy, public health monitoring and interventions and enable different areas of research.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research 

More information about how NHS Digital is processing GP data can be found in NHS Digital's GPDPR Transparency Notice:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/transparency-notice 

Opting out

There are two different opt-outs:

Type 1 Opt-out - prevent sharing of your practice data with NHS Digital; these were introduced in 2013. NHS Digital will not collect data for patients who are already have a Type 1 opt-out recorded. If you wish to regsiter a Type 1 Opt-out please complete the form available here

Data sharing with NHS digital has now been postponed a new start date has not been set; NHS Digital will need to be meet a varierty of stringent tests before going live. They are introducing three changes to the opt-out system which mean that patients will be able to change their opt-out status at any time:

1.Patients do not need to register a Type 1 opt-out by 1 September to ensure their GP data will not be uploaded

2.NHS Digital will create the technical means to allow GP data that has previously been uploaded to the system via the GPDPR collection to be deleted when someone registers a Type 1  opt-out   

3.The plan to retire Type 1 opt-outs will be deferred for at  least 12 months while the new arrangements are introdcued and will not be implemented without consultation with the RCGP, the BMA and the National Data Guardian

The Practice will continue process your opt-out forms when received; unfortuantley we will not be able to confirm processing of individual forms.

National Data Opt-out - opting out of NHS Digital sharing your data unless there is a legal exemption to do so. You can find out more and register a National Data Opt-out or change your choice on https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/  or call 0300 303 5678 if you do not have access to the internet.

You must do the National Opt-out through NHS Digtal, this cannot be done at the practice.

Your individual care will not be affected if you opt-out using Type 1 or National Data Opt-out.