Seasonal and Swine Flu Jab ClinicsOct 29, 02:35 PM

We are currently planing this years influenza immunisation program. This year will be more complex due to the addition of Swine Influenza immunisation. Contrary to what is being presented in the media, not all practices have received their Swine Flu immunisations yet - we have not!

Seasonal Influenza Clinics

Saturday 21st November 8.30 am to 1.00pm

Saturday 28th Novemeber 8.30 am to 1.00pm

We are considering adding further dates, and will publish these as soon as dates have been agreed upon.

Who is the Seasonal Flu Jab For?

Seasonal flu vaccine is offered to all those aged 65 years and over, people with certain long-term medical conditions (for example, chronic respiratory and cardiac disease), health and social care workers, and those who work in close contact with poultry. Read more: NHS Immunisation Website

Swine Influenza Clinics

We will also keep you updated here and in the surgery regarding the Swine Influenza immunisation.

Who Is the Swine Flu Immunisation For?

The groups of people who are most vulnerable to serious illness from swine flu will be offered the vaccine first. In order of priority, these are:

• People aged between six months and 65 years in the seasonal flu vaccine at-risk groups .
• All pregnant women.
• People who live with someone whose immune system is compromised (for example, people with cancer or HIV/AIDS).
• People aged 65 and over in the seasonal flu vaccine at-risk groups.

Frontline health and social care workers will also be offered the vaccine at the same time as the first clinical at-risk groups. Health and social care workers both have an increased risk of catching swine flu and of spreading it to other at-risk patients.

Please see the NHS Swine Flu website for the latest information

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Comments on this Article

1. I had an appointment for 10:50 on Saturday, 21st Nov. When I arrived there was a queue two or three wide stretching from the reception desk into the main car park. To make matters worse, it was raining. It seems that many people have the same appointment time. What is the logic of having appointments when hundreds of people turn up at the same time? It surely can’t be too difficult to use the appointment system properly unless it’s too much trouble for the administration staff. A total lack of organisation and complete contempt for the patients queuing in the rain.

   — Charles Ian Robinson · Nov 21, 12:51 PM · #

2. Dear Mr Robinson
   Thank you for your comments.
   We do try to treat all our patients with respect and try, at all times, to provide an efficient service. I am aware that things did not go well on that Saturday and I can only apologise for the collapse in organisation.
   In trying to analyse the problem we identified a number of factors which contributed to the long queues and delays for patients that morning.
   Firstly, the introduction of the Swine flu vaccine this year meant that patients were having 2 vaccines. This took longer to administer and resulted in the patient being physically ‘held up’ in the building for longer than usual.
   Secondly, the training for clinicians in the administration of the swine flu vaccine was received very late on and we were only informed of our swine flu delivery in the week before the clinic. Therefore, not all clinicians working on the 21st November were trained to administer the swine flu vaccine resulting in us having one clinician administering the seasonal flu and a different clinician administering the swine flu. Unfortunately this meant patients had to queue twice, further delaying the patient on the premises.
   Thirdly, many patients took to parking on the road in front of the building instead of using the car park. This caused major traffic difficulties and Dr Jones ended up spending hours outside trying to direct cars around the blockages when he should have been inside helping with the flu administration.
   With reference to the appointment system, on Saturday 21st November, we had a total of 10 clinicians administering vaccines. As with all our previous flu clinics we book multiple patients at the same time but never more than the number of clinicians we have working can cope with. However the second queue for swine flu did cause some difficulties.
   Ivy Grove Surgery has run flu clinics on Saturday mornings for the last 4 years.
   These have always been well received by our patients and we have never before encountered the problems we did on Saturday 21st November By the time we ran the second clinic on the 28th November we had rectified all the problems. I had organised cascade training for all the clinicians so that all could administer both the seasonal flu and the swine flu, thereby removing the need to queue twice. I had spoken to the police and arranged for them the deliver ‘no parking’ cones to ensure the access to the surgery, the car park and local residents drive ways was kept clear. I arranged the waiting room so that more patients were able to queue inside the building and arranged the chairs so that patients with walking difficulties could ‘sit and queue’ at the same time. I can confirm that the waiting time, on Saturday 28th November, did not extend beyond 5 minutes. Again we had multiple patients booked in at the same time and as detailed above the clinicians coped extremely well.
   I hope this answers your queries and assures you and our other patients that we do listen, learn from our mistakes and make the necessary changes to ensure we improve our systems

   Yours sincerely
   Charmagne Stephenson
   Practice Manager
   ___________________

   — Charmagne Stephenson (practice manager) · Dec 11, 04:38 PM · #

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