September 2019 update

We had a quieter month last month, but still enjoyed our regular meetings and fundraisers. Our first community event for the month was our Tea Dance and afternoon tea at St Edwards Church Hall in Knighton. This is a free event sponsored by the KINDA (dementia awareness in Knighton) charity and we shall continue to offer this informal event for our community on a monthly basis. Our next event was an enjoyable Seafood Lunch, with food provided by Rotary member Angie Ellis and raising £730 for our charitable efforts in the community. At the end of the month we supported the Knighton Show in the form of a stall with a tombola, splat the rat, prize puller for the kids and putting competition. Good fun for everyone! If you want to find out more about what Rotary does please visit our Knighton Rotary Club website or Facebook page, or feel free to visit us on a Wednesday lunch or evening - you will be very warmly welcomed. Contact Norman Thorp 01547 529666 or Cathy Jones 07813 733240 for more details…. 

*Virtual PPG - Our Patient Participation Group meets about every two months. The members act as “critical friends” for the practice. Members of the PPG are often the first point of contact for patients who wish to voice concerns about the service or who are unsure who to contact for help. The Group is always willing to welcome new members and if would be interested in joining please contact Gene Clark gene.clark@nhs.net  

*Practice Education Dates - The surgeries and dispensaries will be closed during the afternoon on the following dates for staff training: 4th Sept. & 11th Dec. 2019.

On the day appointments will be available in Kingsland from 4.30pm when the Kingsland dispensary will also be open.

  *NHS App and Proxy Access - Patients can now download this to their mobile telephones. The app uses the same login details as EMIS Access. The app can be used to order medication, book an appointment, access advice and see parts of your medical record..

Do you order medication or make appointments on behalf of someone else? If you do you can now have proxy access to their EMIS Access account. You will need to get the persons permission to do this. Ask at reception for more information.

*Primary Care Networks - All general practices in England are now part of a primary care network. We are one of five practices in the North & West Herefordshire Network. The other practices are Westfield Walk and Marches from Leominster, Weobley and Staunton and Kington Medical Centre.

The network will be introducing new services and employing different grades of staff in order to provide an enhanced service to our patients. So far we have employed a Social Prescriber who works in all five practices. Adverts have gone out for pharmacists and work is being done on an enhanced physiotherapy service.  Cont/d...

*Social Prescribing - Social Prescribing is a service that looks at non medical interventions that will help improve the health and wellbeing of patients by connecting patients with services, support, information or advice that will help area's of their daily lives that they may be struggling with.

Very often our health can be affected by reasons or circumstances that are of a non medical nature such as family situations, low mood, loneliness, financial problems, trying to stay independent and simply by not knowing what support is available to us.  The role of the Social prescriber is to spend time working with patients to explore non medical interventions that will address some of these issue's. 

Our Social Prescriber, Tracy Price, is available at Mortimer Medical Practice every week to meet patients who would benefit from this input. 

*Staff changes - This summer we have said goodbye to Laura Mellar. Laura had been commuting from Dudley since her marriage and felt the time had come to find employment nearer to her home.

We welcome Leah Birch and Claire Ray to our dispensaries. Leah has been appointed as a dispenser in Leintwardine and Kingsland. Claire is a relief dispenser who will be working on each site.

We have also said goodbye to Simon Hare. Simon is an Audiologist from Scrivens who has worked in our practice for several years. Scrivens will still be providing a hearing aid service in the surgeries.  

*Practice Walk - Thank you to everybody who sponsored us on our May March. Several staff members, family and dogs had an enjoyable walk around Yarpole and Bircher.

We raised £457.50 for the Macmillan Nurses.

A new newsletter is now available at surgeries.  CM PPG REP.

We’ve had a couple of e-mails asking about our Lingen Daffodils. These daffs were planted by villagers (under licence) in 2006 to brighten up the verges beside our village nameplates. The daffodils were purchased for this purpose by the local group ‘Lingen Arts All Inclusive’ (LAAI) with the majority of the forerunning snowdrops being donated by residents from their gardens.

The full story can be seen on the Lingen Arts All Inclusive web page https://lingen.org.uk/arts-all-inclusive

Our daffodils are Narcissus Pseudnarcissus; the wild Tenby daffodil. Of these in the late 16th century John Gerard wrote that wild daffodils grew almost everywhere in England. Since then they’ve become increasingly rare due to agricultural intensification. 

These spring flowers have been given many names across the ages and counties, for example ‘fairy bells’ in Dorset and ‘lenty cups’ in Somerset.

In folklore, they are considered lucky and not to be stepped on. In giving a loved one a bunch of daffs, you are sending them good luck.