Ileach Update, Saturday 10th September 2022
Vaccination Programme Update
We will shortly be starting our winter Covid-19 and ‘flu vaccine clinics and, as instructed by Scottish Government, will be inviting over 75s only to receive these boosters during the month of September. Eligible patients will be contacted by telephone. The Covid-19 vaccine offered is anticipated to be the Moderna vaccine, which provides protection against the newer Covid-19 variants, but this remains subject to change based on stocks and what we receive. We will progress to vaccinate other groups in due course and will provide an update later in September. Please do not phone the practice for appointments - we will be in touch when clinics are open for booking.
New GP team member
We are delighted to welcome Dr Kate Coombes to the GP team. Dr Coombes joins us as part of the Rural Fellowship Programme, a programme offering remote and rural practice experience to fully-qualified GPs. We have benefitted hugely from this programme in the past (Drs Dean and Cooper both started with us as Rural Fellows) and we are very fortunate to have Dr Coombes working with us. She will mostly be based in Port Ellen Surgery for the General Practice part of her post (though may pop up at other surgeries as required!) and she will take part in the on-call rota working overnight and at weekends in Islay Hospital along with the rest of the team. Please welcome her and her husband - we expect to have them here for a year, and hope they have a fantastic experience living and working on our beautiful island!
Upcoming major IT systems upgrade
Please see our separate notice about our long-awaited major IT upgrade - this is to allow all three GP practices to be moved to the one (new, functional!) server. This will allow easier access to records for our clinical team across the island, and will bring some much overdue improvements to the way we request investigations such as blood tests, and deal with the results. The details of this upgrade are on the separate notice, but essentially from Saturday 24th September for a week we anticipate not having access to clinical records, so if you are on repeat medication, please order this early and ensure you have plenty before the computer systems go down. We have normal weekend urgent cover for Saturday 24th, Sunday 25th and the Bank Holiday Monday 26th, then will be running urgent and emergency clinics only until the server upgrade is complete and live. Please remember to allow 48 hours to process any prescription requests, and get these in before Wednesday 21st September if required during the following week. Any urgent prescriptions needed during the downtime will be handwritten. This information will be publicised in the next issue of the Ileach too.