About Wallingford

Wallingford is a small market town on the river Thames halfway between Oxford and Reading.  It was a walled Saxon Town and the remains of the town walls can still be seen today. William the Conqueror built Wallingford Castle, which was used as a royal residence until the time of the Black Death. The Castle was demolished by the order of Oliver Cromwell in 1646 after a 65 day siege. The remains of the Castle can be seen from the Castle Gardens.

Wallingford Bridge

St Peter's Church
 

The Medical Practice

The practice was formed out of several individual practices in the 70s.  Initially situated in the old community hospital building it since has expanded into new buildings alongside.  Our most recent building project was finished in March 2005 to make room for nurses and a conference room.

The practice is fully computerised with networked PCs throughout the building. We are paperless and use the Vision medical system.

We use an Intranet and each PC has access to the NHS net and via that the worldwide web.  14700 patients are registered with the practice.  The practice area is classified as semi-rural covering a radius of about 5 miles around Wallingford.

We employ 27 staff including receptionists, clerical workers, secretarial staff, dispensers, nurses and health care assistants. 

Surgery entrance

The practice is dispensing to part of its patient population.  This provides additional scope for learning but is also very practical for day to day work.  We are proud to be one of the top scoring practices regards the quality framework.  Our South East Oxfordshire PCT has been taking top place in the national quality framework league table.  Wallingford is a PMS practice.

Training tradition

We have a long tradition of training General Practitioners and have been part of the Reading Vocational Training Scheme for some years now.   The current trainer is Dr H J Paul,  Dr E Walker has been training up too recently and has set his sights onto becoming a college examiner. 

Some of our registrars have been doing very well lately in the MRCGP exam. We have also had a senior registrar and once yearly we teach medical students for a couple of weeks.

If you wish to speak to our registrar or some of our ex-registrars we will try and help you to contact them.

Aims of registrar training

We at Wallingford Medical Practice aim to provide a happy, informative and resourceful working environment for GP registrars to develop into independent practitioners.  We feel it is very important they should enjoy their registrar year and feel able to cope with all styles of general practice when they leave.

Setup for training

The registrar has his/her own room opposite the trainer’s, which facilitates easy support if it is needed. The room is fully equipped and the registrar can individualise it in terms of layout, pictures and plants etc. The registrar’s room has a networked computer with access to the NHS net, the intranet and clinical system as well as other shared information such as practice protocols.  In a recent extension to our surgery we have included a spacious meeting room which we use for educational meetings as well as tutorials.  All the necessary computer-/video-/DVD-equipment are available there.

The registrar

The registrar should get a good balance between work experience and time for other education e.g. sitting in on consultant clinics, project time and time for video preparation. The tutorial time is protected.  All the other doctors in the practice and other members of the Primary Health care Team are available for teaching both on an ad hoc basis and as part of a more formal negotiated curriculum. The library is kept up to date as much as possible and the registrar can put forward any books or other resources they feel need buying. The journals are the usual free and purchased ones recommended for training and the most current issues are kept in the library.

Training room

Registrars are encouraged to take an active part in the practice and as part of that they are invited to all the meetings including confidential partnership meetings.  We like to hear their views during any decision making. The registrar has Tuesday on the Day Release in Reading, Thursday half-day (as does his/her trainer), and Friday afternoon tutorial. The rest of the week involves surgeries, visits, meetings and looking after a local residential and nursing home.  This is particular useful for learning to manage the complexities of chronic disease care.

Southern aspect of surgery
 

The doctors

There are six GP-partners working in Wallingford. Five of them are full time.  Two part time salaried GP’s share a patient list and we employ a flexible career’s scheme GP too.  The doctors and Practice Manager meet every Thursday morning at 8.15 to discuss various topics.  There is a more formal partners’ meeting once every 6 weeks in the evenings to discuss more difficult topics. This is a time when the most important partnership decisions are made. Decisions about the day to day management are taken at the Thursday morning meetings or other informal meetings at coffee time and occasional lunchtime meetings.

Primary Health Care Team

Wallingford has a large and active Primary Health Care Team consisting of not only its GP’s but District Nurses, Health Visitors, Practice Nurses, Midwives, Counsellors, Social Workers, Psychologists, Dieticians, School Nurses and Community Psychiatric Nurses.  The communication between members is excellent as many members of the team either work from the medical practice or the neighbouring community hospital.  There is ample opportunity for informal meetings over coffee or the regular large meeting held every month. We review cases, discuss particular topics, or invite an update from a local specialist or resource.

Our practice nurses are involved in the health education of patients as well as the monitoring of those with chronic diseases, including hypertension, asthma, COPD, CHD, diabetes, smoking cessation, family planning and others.  They also spend a great deal of their time advising people on travel abroad and giving vaccinations.

Most of the GPs here provide a minor surgery service

Out of hours

Evenings, overnight and weekends are all covered by the integrated emergency service provided by the primary care trust.  Some of the Wallingford doctors take part in providing cover working from either the Henley or Abingdon base of the out of hours service.  Dr Paul, the current trainer, also works for the out of hours palliative care service.  The registrar will have opportunity to join us for shifts which will count towards his/her accreditation.

Community hospital

General Practice in Wallingford is different from many other parts of the country in that we have a community hospital on site with inpatient and outpatient services. The hospital houses the minor injuries unit, outpatients, X-ray, physiotherapy, day hospital and occupational therapy and the hospital administration. This gives the registrar resources for learning that they might not have in other areas.

Community hospital entrance

We have consultants visiting from Oxford and Reading hospitals on a regular basis.  They do clinics in all the major specialities and we have opportunity to meet them on an informal basis or more formally for lunchtime or evening educational meetings.  This gives all the doctors an opportunity to catch up with the latest ideas from the hospital, and get face to face advice on specific patients. The Community Hospital has regular visits from complimentary practitioners, including Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Holistic massage, Chiropractors and Reflexology.

We have a very active Maternity Unit, which is midwife run. But again the midwives are keen to teach and there is another opportunity for the registrar.

Everyone of us Wallingford GP’s has admitting rights to the community hospital.  This can be very useful if you wish to help a patient with 24 hour nursing care but admission to one of the acute hospitals is not required.  We also treat patients with palliative care needs.  Many patients return to Wallingford Hospital for a period of rehabilitation following major surgery or other admissions to one of the large acute hospitals in Reading or Oxford.  The local population is strongly supportive of the Community Hospital’s role.

Nursing Homes

We look after five residential and nursing homes in the area.  We visit them on a regular weekly basis.  Westgate House is a new residential/nursing home in Wallingford which is looked after by our registrar.  Dr A Henry is the GP nominally in charge of patients there but the registrar is obviously fully supported by his/her trainer too.  Care of the elderly is an important part of our work.  It can be very challenging but equally rewarding and is undoubtedly good for learning about chronic disease.

There is more to life than work

We encourage the registrar to become involved in all the activities going on in the practice both medical and social.  Our educational meetings are rarely educational alone.  Throughout the year we meet for dinner or other outings. The morning coffee break is sacrosanct.  It allows us to meet up with our staff and members of the primary health care team for both social as well as medical chat.