4/9/24 - The power of group education and social interaction

How are we going to reach my target of reaching 1000 people with group education in my first year you might have wondered? Well, we were already doing some group work with evening menopause sessions and healthy eating sessions. Since I took over in April, we have had our first group session on a Saturday morning at Chawton House for people with Type 1 Diabetes and in July we experimented with our first Zoom session with over 50 people attending a session on Pre-Diabetes. You can read about these groups here. Further sessions like this are planned but I want to get more of the team involved and so together with Helen Clarke (our lead Social Prescriber) the idea of Wellbeing Wednesdays has come about.

We will be hosting monthly (excluding December) sessions at The Bridge in Milford on Sea giving different members of our team the opportunity to share their knowledge with you on various topics. If these are successful, we will look to provide sessions more widely across our geography. We may also look to do more Zoom sessions so we can reach as many people as possible.

Coming to a group session is not only a good way of learning something new but also a great excuse to get out of the house and meet some new people or even catch up with someone you may have lost contact with. People attending can also benefit from peer support which I believe is really important.

We are limited on space so we do need people to book using an online form. I will be hosting a face-to-face version of my Pre-Diabetes Zoom session in January but we are not taking bookings for that one yet. I'm working out how to include some interactive elements and will be bringing some plastic fruit and vegetables!

Check out our Wellbeing Wednesdays page for more information and a link to the sign up form.

Dr Neil Moody-Jones

5/5/24 - A Message from Dr Neil Moody-Jones

I have taken over as Clinical Director of New Forest Primary Care Network (PCN) from 1/4/24. I would like to thank Dr Sally Johnston for her leadership over the last five years. She has led us from the inception of PCN's through to the present when we have a great team of individuals here to support our practices and our population. Dr Johnston is going to have a busy Autumn (or will it be summer?) and wish her the best of luck with her endeavours.

I think it is important for our team to have some goals for the year to help focus our activities but also hopefully to help demonstrate our achievements. We have set the following five goals and I will go into these in more detail below. 

1. Support General Practice

It is a difficult time for General Practice and the Health Service as a whole. There are significant financial pressures on practices and ever rising demands for our services. Above you can see some of the things the PCN does which help support practices. These can be broken down into two main categories:

• Providing additional capacity - e.g. physio appointments, home visits, social prescribing
• Preventative medicine / health promotion - e.g. care plans, weight management, education sessions, vaccinations

By promoting health it is hoped that we can reduce demands on services to help us cope with the expected (and justified) requirements of an aging population.

2. Improve High Blood Pressure Treatment

High blood pressure is a major risk factor for various conditions including heart disease and stroke. Across our PCN there will be hundreds of people with undiagnosed high blood pressure. There are also hundreds of patients on treatment but where their treatment is not currently reducing their blood pressure enough. We want to target both of these groups.

You can visit our Hypertension Pathway page to learn more about how you might check for undiagnosed high blood pressure. We also are keen for everyone with a diagnosis to have their blood pressure checked within the next 11 months.

3. Reduce Average Sugar Levels

Type 2 Diabetes is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke but also increases the risk of various other conditions including cancer. We have growing numbers of people living with Type 2 Diabetes but also with Prediabetes where the sugar levels are slightly raised but not enough to diagnose Type 2 Diabetes. If we can help those with Prediabetes to make changes to their diet we should be able to reduce how many people go on to develop Type 2 Diabetes.

We have been having a lot of success encouraging the use of lower carbohydrate diets in those with Prediabetes (and Type 2 Diabetes). You can learn more about this here.

4. Reach 1000 people with Group Education

New Forest PCN covers a population over 36 thousand people. If we want to make an impact on the health of our population it makes sense to try and do more group activities. We hosted a menopause education session last year with 100 attendees. We hope to do more group activities like this in the coming year. Check out our new groups page for more information.

5. Improve the Care of Housebound Patients

We are fortunate as a PCN to now employ two paramedics who undertake home visits. They are going to be able to provide vaccinations for patients at home soon and we also plan to get them doing more routine checks for patients who are housebound.

Hopefully we can look back in a years time and see what we have achieved in the above areas. It would be great if you can help us achieve our goals which might mean doing some of the following:

• Submitting a Blood Pressure reading when requested.
• Consider attending a group education session if you are invited.
• Support the use of other roles in your practice e.g. physio, pharmacist or paramedic. By some specific and appropriate requests for care being managed by other members of the team it means your GP is more likely to be available when you need them.

I will be writing the occasional update here as we progress through the year. I look forward to working more with all our practices to try and improve services for all of you and to promote the health of our population.

Dr Neil Moody-Jones

Clinical Director New Forest PCN

GP Partner Wistaria and Milford Surgeries