Season Flu and H1N1 Vaccination

There is a lot of confusion over this year's influenza vaccination program.

We have just received our guidance for this year's vaccinations.

1. We are going to vaccinate over 65s as usual with the season flu vaccine. We will be arranging days to hold vaccination walk in clinics once we receive our supplies.

2. We are going to vaccinate all age groups for H1N1 in November when supplies become available.

3. We are going to vaccinate other at risk groups (children and those with chronic diseases under the age of 65) after the H1N1 vaccinations are completed.



Bear in mind that:

- the last time we had an H1N1 pandemic was 1956, so people over the age of 65 are at high risk from seasonal flu and lower risk from H1N1 as they will likely have had previous exposure when they were younger.

- children and younger adults are at higher risk of H1N1 as they will not have encountered it before, but are at lower risk from seasonal flu.

- there are unconfirmed reports that people who have had seasonal flu vaccination are at higher risk of becoming ill from H1N1.

We're Hiring!

Edit: we have now filled these posts - thank you to everyone who applied, and welcome to our new staff!

We are expanding and we are looking to hire two new staff - a clinic nurse, and a receptionist / secretary.

We are a state-of-the art, fully computerized, paperless clinic concentrating on chronic disease prevention and management. We emphasize a collegiate style of work and practice based on the biopsychosocial model of medicine.

We're looking for a nurse and a receptionist who are interested in helping us to provide top quality care to our patients.

If you are interested in either of these posts, or you know someone who might be, then download an application form and job description using the links below.

The closing date for applications is Tuesday 20th October.


Nurse job description
Nurse application form

Receptionist / Secretary job description
Receptionist / Secretary application form

Waiting times

As with other physicians, our clinics can often run late for various reasons. For example, a patient may require more time than usual or an urgent problem may crop up that needs to be dealt with straight away.

This can be frustrating for patients who are waiting past their appointment time.

To help, we now have a Waiting TIme Display. You can see this online on our website (either at the top right of the site under 'Today's Clinics' or by visiting the page directly), on a display in our waiting room. It will also be available upstairs in the walk in clinic when Dr Coull is seeing patients.

The display lists all the staff who have booked appointments for that day and whether they are running on time or late. This can help patients plan when the clinic is running behind.

In our main clinic we can catch up quickly sometimes, so to avoid being bumped please do let the staff know if you are going to be stepping out.

If you are a family physician and would like to implement this Waiting Room Display in your clinic it can be downloaded for free from the tech.oscarpei.net website.