Queen’s road medical group

Inside this issue
Flu Vaccination 2004
Coronary Heart Disease & Diabetes
Influenza (Flu), is a debilitating winter illness which Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke are the major can be life threatening to the elderly or those causes of death and ill health in Scotland. If we are suffering from chronic illness. For many years to be successful in preventing further illness we Queen’s Road Medical Group, following advice from must manage those with the disease so as to the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, has offered reduce their risk of suffering further acute events. Secondary Prevention Coronary Heart Disease Screening Clinic. This takes place at the Torry Neighbourhood Centre on a weekly basis. It is a nurse led clinic where the risk factors of Coronary Heart Disease are assessed. Advice is given on any changes needed including diet, exercise and smoking status. Current medication is reviewed, blood pressure and cholesterol levels are monitored. Our re-call system is changing, but all
patients at risk from heart disease will be offered an annual review. Please remember that regular
reviews of your health could help avoid further
heart problems.
Over 120,000 (1 in 40) people in Scotland have Uptake last year was well over 70% of our target complications of Diabetes include a high risk of population. The programme is run in both the heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, eye disease Rubislaw Church Hall and the Torry Neighbourhood and foot ulceration. However, there is increasing Centre by our own practice nurses and specially evidence that good control of blood sugar, blood employed staff. We vaccinated over 1800 people pressure and cholesterol can delay and even last year and hope to achieve more this year. prevent the onset on complications of diabetes. In conjunction with the Flu vaccine we will be The Grampian Diabetes Managed Clinical Network offering the Pneumococcal vaccine to those who has provided guidelines for Primary Care to assist in the care of Diabetic patients. At the practice we Pneumococcus is responsible for tonsillitis, chest now have a GP and a practice nurse who have infections and in rare cases meningitis. We have taken further training in Diabetes management and been advised to offer this vaccine to all aged 65 and we are pleased to inform you that from October over. Once vaccinated you are protected for several 2004 we shall be running a nurse led Diabetic Clinic years and will not need regular re-vaccination. at the Torry Neighbourhood Centre. Patients with type 2 Diabetes will be invited to attend every 6 The programme will run from the beginning of months for assessment, monitoring and advice on October until December and those eligible will their Diabetes and associated risk factors. Patients
receive a letter of invitation and instruction to their will receive a letter of invitation to attend the
clinic. This is an opportunity for our patients with
Diabetes to receive the benefits of practice based We hope that if eligible you will take the care and we are looking forward to providing this vaccinations offered and protect yourself for the Want to give up smoking?
assistance? Well in this instance the practice can refer you for more intensive smoking cessation advice and counselling. This can again result in a prescription of NRT or even Zyban which is an alternative medication that can also prove effective. I have not mentioned alternative methods of If you ask most smokers whether they want to give acupuncture, laser therapy, and hypnosis as the up, the majority will say yes. I could bore you with lots of statistics as to why you should but I can see The message must always be that whatever works for you then that is fine. Obviously these other That is the problem; we are human and believe methods will cost you money but if you succeed rightly or wrongly that nothing will ever happen to think of the overall savings you are going to make. Nothing in life is easy and there can be no gains Unfortunately we do know better but push logic to without some ‘pain’ but if at first you don’t succeed the back of out minds when difficult decisions have then try, try again. You know it makes sense! to be made. We behave like the ostrich and bury our Additionally when you are young and start to smoke, health problems are not uppermost in your mind and the attitude of I can easily stop tends to prevail, but time passes by all too fast and lo and behold you are middle-aged and health problems are now in NHS Stop Smoking Helpline 0800 169 0 169 A smoker can always regale you with so and so down the road that smoked full strength Woodbines and never had a day’s illness. Unfortunately this is a Staff Changes
rarity and if you could be the fly on the wall of my daily surgery and visits you would soon see and We are sorry to confirm that Anne Ferenth, Practice appreciate the devastating diseases that are directly Nurse at 6 Queen’s Road, left us at the beginning of August. She has cared for our Queen’s Road I will provide some useful links and telephone patients faithfully for 14 years and will be much numbers at the end of this article as there is a lot of missed. We wish her well for the future. help out there! You just have to make use of it! Anyway what can the practice do for you if you Staff Fundraising
Well there is good evidence that if the doctor or nurse advises that your health is suffering many If you have been here on the last Friday of any people will actually go away and stop! Great, so month, you may have noticed that the staff and expect us to ask whether you smoke and we will try doctors are dressed more casually than usual. If they choose to do so, they are “fined” £1 each and the money goes to a nominated charity. Sometimes We can offer some basic literature on how to staff raise extra cash by selling home baking too. manage the process and what help is available. If you have made a decision to stop it is likely we will We collected nearly £100 for the Kelly Cumming Trust and our nominated charity for July – In Grampian most pharmacies will provide a September is Aberdeen Breathe-Easy, part of the personal service on smoking cessation which involves the issue of Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) with only a prescription charge to pay or at no If you would like to nominate a charity, please
cost if you are already exempt! You will not need a let us know.
doctor’s prescription! The pharmacist will assess you fully and issue NRT at the appropriate strength and arrange follow up initially on a weekly basis for the first month. You will generally be offered a 3 month reducing course of treatment at NHS cost Please visit the practice website for more and bingo, you are now a smoke free zone! If only information about Queen’s Road Medical Group and What if low level pharmacy support does not succeed or there is a requirement for more intensive Suggestions and Comments
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We aim to provide an efficient service at all times and welcome any feedback from patients, either about this newsletter or about the practice generally. Please use this tear off slip and hand it to the receptionist. Thank you.

Source: http://www.clarkg.force9.co.uk/pdf%20files/Newsletter%20September%202004%20issue%205.pdf