As it has done throughout the pandemic the surgery remains open to patients, we are still doing consultation, we are still recalling patients for medication reviews and chronic disease care and we are still doing home visits when clinically needed. We are operating a telephone triage system, you will be offered a telephone consultation, if it is clinically needed a GP will offer you a video or a face to face appointment. We are experiencing unprecedented high levels of patients accessing our services and this is putting pressure on our services, please consider if you can get help from another support service the NHS website will be able to support you with this.
Our receptionist may direct you to use the services of a clinician more suited to your clinical needs such as our Nurse Practitioner or Physiotherapist, please don’t insist on seeing a GP instead, this only puts more pressure on our over stretched GPs. When asked please provide the reception team with a broad overview of your problems that way they can support you and ensure the right information is passed to the clinicians. Please treat our team with courtesy, don’t get cross or aggressive with our staff they are taking a huge number of calls and they are trying to help you.
We believe that all patients in cohorts 1 to 9 have been contacted by the surgery and offered both first and second vaccines at the Etchingham or Hastings sites. If you have not been contacted for a second Covid vaccine and you had your vaccine at Etchingham, please contact the surgery to book an appointment. The surgery is now reducing it’s involvement with the Etchingham site this will be run extensively by Sussex Community Foundation Trust and patient should book their vaccine appointments via the national booking centre. The surgery will still be providing housebound patients with their covid vaccines, so if you are housebound and need a vaccination please contact our reception team.
