"If I die it will be your fault" Institute of General Practice Management Campaign video to end abuse in GP Practices

As a practice, we are no exception and we have been proud of our continuing services to care for our patients safely during these difficult times. We have greatly appreciated how our patients have adapted to our 'new normal' working practices and we have continued to see patients face to face on a medical need basis throughout the whole pandemic. As a community you have welcomed the changes we have had to make to keep our staff and patients safe and a big shout out to our clinicians who have continued to serve the community through home visits.  Our priority has always been to ensure the continuity of care for all our patients

It comes as no surprise however, that our work load has dramatically increased to ensure we meet these demands, our list continues to grow and we are exceptionally proud of our Covid Vaccine programme which hit a milestone of  over 30000 vaccines being administered as of mid June!  Our team have worked tirelessly to make this happen and have gone above and beyond to deliver exceptional care sometimes sacrificing their own commitments. We are immensely proud of our teams but our work is not yet done. We continue to experience high call volumes and we understand it is not always easy to get through to us as quick as we would like it to be.  We have however, integrated a new telephone system and we have employed additional staff so we can cope with the demands to improve to respond to your calls quicker.  We are very open to the feedback and we receive many calls to say the receptionist is not answering.  This is not the case, behind the scenes there are multiple call handlers that triage various call types, so please be patient when you call, our reception teams are working hard to get to get to you, the next patient and so on.

We truly understand your frustrations when you are waiting for us to call you, however this does not excuse you from shouting and swearing at our staff or from calling them useless, stupid, incompetent and a number of other unrepeatable things. There is a zero tolerance policy across the NHS for patients who are abusive and/or violent to staff. Here at East Durham Medical Group we do not tolerate any form of abuse to our teams, so please be kind we are working hard to help you!

From time to time we will get things wrong but we are always approachable and open to patient feedback on what we can do better, it is never our aim to cause upset to our patients so please talk to us when we do get things wrong and we will set out to look into any concerns you raise.  We are human too and our clinicians and admin staff  are tired, many of whom have been working 7 days a week to ensure patients receive the Covid 19 vaccination. As a nation, a community, our families, our friends, we are all going through the same thing, something none of us have experienced in our life time.  So please, we ask you, please show kindness, consideration and respect to our amazing teams who are working so hard for you.  If we get things wrong please come to us direct, everyone has an opinion and we welcome you with open arms to discuss this one to one with us, we don't deserve inappropriate comments on social media when every day we get up to do a good job in such challenging circumstances.

We will get through this and we thank you for your co-operation but please, be kind, and remember, we are all in this together!

Welcome to East Durham Medical Group

The 3 former practices – The Carodoc Practice, Shinwell Medical Group and Phoenix Medical Group merged with effect from April1, 2019 to form East Durham Medical Group.

The original practices were established with the sinking of the colliery mines over 100 years ago. The practice is 18,500 patients across 6 sites Wingate, Horden, Peterlee, Wheatley Hill, Thornley and Kelloe. The new practice retains the values of Dr Chandy , Dr Fairlamb and Dr Patel the former senior partners of the 3 merging practices.

The vision of our practice is ‘Compassionate Continuing Care’.

Despite being a large practice we are keen to maintain a service that feels personal where you know your local GPs and nurses. However you do have the choice of taking an appointment at any of our 6 sites if that is more convenient for you. The practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission.

We wish to provide the best service we can and also provide continuity with specific GPs across the various sites of the practice as outlined below

Wingate - Dr Samuel, Dr Ramzi, Dr Dibdin, Dr Clark and Dr Hassan
Peterlee - Dr Naing, Dr Htoo and Dr Hassan
Horden - Dr Barnsley, Dr Kalia and Dr Ramzi
Wheatley Hill - Dr Naing, Dr Adla, Dr Mangat
Thornley - Dr Htoo, Dr Adla
Kelloe - Dr Adla

If you wish to discuss any concerns regarding the service provision of the practice, please discuss this with your patient group representative to be discussed in the practice patient participation group meetings or liaise with the senior GPs in the practice

Wingate & Peterlee - Dr Samuel
Horden - Dr Barnsley
Wheatley Hill and Kelloe - Dr Naing
Thornley - Dr Kyaw

Our Statement of Purpose and Aims are displayed in all our sites:
E – Every Patient Counts
D - Delivering quality care, embracing change
M - Multi-skilled continuing care to support patient wellbeing
G – Grounded in our community

Our Core Values:
Caring
Commitment
Consistency
Celebrate success

Our surgery website is a way of presenting to all our patients an up to date resource for all information relating to our practice. We will keep it current with any news, developments & details that are relevant to the practice & our patients.

As well as a source of information about our Practice, the staff & the services we provide, we hope you use the website as a useful resource with links to other reliable websites for health related information. If there is topical health information we will also add this to the website.

Have a look around our website and please do send us some feedback. We can use your thoughts to improve our online services & further develop the website to make it a more useful, practical application for our patients.

Patient Online Access

Did you know that you can now access some of our services online direct from your Smart Phone or a Tablet ?

You can make GP appointments, order repeat prescriptions, view certain digitally coded areas of your medical records including some test results online. Please speak to one of our friendly Reception Team for your "User Specific" logon details to access this service.

Access

Wheelchair access to the building is via a ramp near the front entrance. Patient services are all provided at ground-floor level. A disabled patients’ WC is provided.

Please note that all patients now have an Allocated Named GP. 
This does not affect who you wish to see when  making an appointment.  You can request the name of your Allocated GP at our Reception.