Formby GP is committed to providing a safe, comfortable environment where patients and staff can be confident that best practice is being followed at all times and the safety of everyone is of paramount importance.
All patients are entitled to have a chaperone present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel one is required.
Regardless of the sex of the patient or clinician, you will be offered the option of having an impartial observer (chaperone) present for any intimate examination. Our trained staff routinely undertake this role and will:
Be sensitive and respect your dignity and confidentiality
Reassure you in the event of distress or discomfort
Be familiar with the procedures involved
Stay for the whole examination and be able to see what the clinician is doing, if practical
Be prepared to raise concerns if they are concerned about the clinician’s behaviour or actions.
The GP you see may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations.
The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. The CQC monitors, inspects, and rates services, including NHS and private clinics.
Formby GP’s page on the CQC website can be found here.
You can give feedback on your experiences with us – good or bad – via the CQC’s Give Feedback on Care portal.
It is once again the time of year when many people are starting to prepare for their travels, and we are getting many enquiries about travel vaccinations.
Many of our patients come to us for their travel vaccinations. Our vaccination service is:
doctor led
convenient (for some)
discreet
trusted by existing patients
Set against these advantages, we can unfortunately be significantly more expensive than other providers, including pharmacies. This is due to our higher costs, including tax.
If you would like a vaccination from us, please complete and send in the form www.FormbyGP.com/travel so that we have the information we need to be able to give you a quote. If you would then like to proceed, you can book an appointment for the vaccination and pay a non-refundable booking fee (£60 at the time of writing).
If you prefer to go elsewhere for your travel vaccination, we will certainly not be offended. Please bear us in mind should you need a GP consultation, which can be booked at www.FormbyGP.com/book.
I just came across something interesting I thought would be worth sharing here. The NHS has a waiting list tracker tool called “My Planned Care”: this means you can see how long you are likely to be waiting for your first outpatient appointment, and for your treatment/surgery, if you have been referred to an NHS hospital. The waiting list figures are grouped by department, so it’s not an exact guide, and for urgent problems you are likely to be seen more quickly than these figures, while for less urgent issues you may be waiting longer.
Here is the page for the Trust which includes Southport & Ormskirk, and here is the page for the Trust which includes Aintree Hospital.
At Formby GP, we can refer into most local NHS outpatient clinics if appropriate. The entitlement to NHS care sits with the patient, not with the person referring, so hospitals can and do accept referrals from private GPs. We have something called an ODS code, which allows the local NHS health bosses to track our referral activity to make sure we’re not doing anything too eccentric!
I hope you’re having a good weekend. We have had a very hectic time recently, so we’ve spent today doing very little. Eddie wanted to play football in the back garden, using the bins as goals; he beat me 10-4!
On Monday we held a meeting of Formby GP’s Patient Liaison Group. Our PLG is a small, friendly group of people who meet every 3 months to give us feedback and help to shape our service. We are looking for new members! If you’d like to get involved, please email us on clinical@formbygp.net so we can invite you to future meetings.
As an additional inducement, we provide refreshments -John thought I’d bought too much food, but most of it went pretty quickly!
We are sometimes asked to prescribe and administer vaccinations privately.
Do drop us an email with your vaccine requirements and we will check them and provide a quote before booking your appointment, so that we can order in precisely what you need when you need it.
Many of our loyal patients choose to have their vaccines with us. Our premises are located opposite Freshfield Station so we are conveniently located for Formby residents. All our vaccines are prescribed by one of our doctors.
We pride ourselves on offering a convenient and obliging service. On some occasions, however, due to the vagaries of VAT rules, we are less competitive for certain vaccines than local pharmacies, so we won’t be offended if you decide to go elsewhere.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and many well-meaning people – including some healthcare professionals, and charities such as Breast Cancer Now – have been sharing posts about the importance of breast self-examination. Unfortunately, the reality is rather more nuanced than most people realise. Research evidence suggests that breast self-examination does NOT result in fewer women dying from breast cancer, and it can do more harm than good; women who self-examine their breasts are more likely to undergo a biopsy of their breast, but this does NOT translate into a reduction in rates of death due to breast cancer.
For that reason, at Formby GP we do not recommend routine breast self-examination for healthy women with no symptoms. Instead, we would recommend keeping an eye out for any changes (such as a lump in the breast; skin changes; or nipple discharge) and consulting a GP if you notice any of these symptoms. If you have new breast symptoms and are over 30, your GP will almost always do an urgent referral to breast clinic so that breast cancer can be ruled out. (If you are under 30, you may well need referral too, but in some circumstances your doctor will watch and wait first.)
If you’d like to read more about why the evidence base does not support routine breast self-examination, the Cochrane Review is available online here.
Many private GP services offer “health checks” and “MOTs”, in which you pay a fixed price and have a set panel of blood tests and other checks. Here at Formby GP, we don’t offer set “MOT” packages – why not?
The problem with one-size-fits-all “health checks” is that research evidence actually shows that they don’t work. There is actually a Cochrane Review – the highest-grade evidence there is – which shows that “health checks” do not reduce patients’ risk of death from all causes, do not reduce patients’ risk of dying from cancer, and have little to no effect on heart disease outcomes.
Furthermore, there is actually a risk that generic “health checks” can do more harm than good. Whenever we do tests, there is a risk of false positives or other “red herrings”, which can result in patients having unnecessary tests and treatment, as well as causing a lot of worry and stress. There is also the risk that a patient with symptoms may be falsely reassured by normal test results. This is why it is best practice only to do tests when they are needed – such as if a patient has symptoms of an illness, or certain risk factors, or a relevant family history.
That’s why, if you contact Formby GP requesting a health check, we will advise you to book a GP appointment first. Patients almost never request a health check for absolutely no reason – perhaps you’re feeling tired and run down, or you’ve gained some weight recently, or your brother had a heart attack last year and you’re worried it’ll be your turn next. In your GP appointment, we will discuss any symptoms you have, your family history, your risk factors for illness, and we can explore anything that is worrying you. Then we can agree together on a plan, including any tests you need.
This approach often saves our patients money, as you don’t get charged for lots of unnecessary tests. But more importantly, it means you get a better standard of care.
This is why we describe Formby GP as “ethical”; our top priority is doing the right thing for our patients, rather than doing what is easiest for us or makes us the most profit.
If you’re worried about your health and would like to talk to one of our friendly GPs, you can book an appointment online:
Every Spring we see posts about the so-called “hayfever jab”. Unlike many of our competitors, we very deliberately DON’T offer Kenalog injections for hayfever. Why not?
Kenalog is an injection which was once approved to treat hayfever. The idea of just having one or two injections to keep hayfever at bay for months may seem appealing. However, the evidence shows that Kenalog, a long-acting steroid, is no more effective than safer treatments. For that reason, it is no longer approved for use in the UK (and most other countries) as a treatment for hayfever.
Most doctors no longer offer the treatment, and Allergy UK – a national charity supporting allergy sufferers – explicitly does not recommend its use for hayfever. International experts also warn against the use of steroid injections for hayfever. Yet despite this, many private medical clinics and aesthetic services offer the treatment. Many of those giving the treatment are beauty therapists rather than doctors or nurses.
Although steroid injections do usually help with hayfever symptoms, there is a real risk of side-effects, some of them serious – they can affect blood sugars, mental health, and bone health, and may make you more vulnerable to infections. So they are not routinely recommended because there are effective alternatives which are much safer. Alternatives include antihistamines – which can be given as a nasal spray, or as tablets – and nasal steroid sprays, which are much safer than Kenalog because much less of the steroid is absorbed into the bloodstream. Most of these options can be bought from your local chemist. If those don’t work, then your GP – either NHS or private – will be able to advise about prescription-only treatments.
If, despite those prescription-only treatments, your GP can’t get on top of your symptoms, then it may be appropriate for you to be referred to an allergy specialist. Specialists can sometimes offer options like immunotherapy treatment, though that isn’t an option for everyone.
Patients sometimes seek Kenalog because they have an important event coming up, but even then, we would not recommend it; there are other alternatives which are as effective but safer, such as a short course of oral steroid tablets.
At Formby GP, we want our patients to know that they can trust us. We will not try to sell you things which we believe would do you more harm than good. As doctors our duty is clear: to first do no harm.
Autumn term is well underway and talk at the school gates is turning to nits (or rather head lice – nits being their eggs). Many parents feel itchy as soon as they receive the first WhatsApp message about them, whether or not they or their child are affected!
Did you know…
1. The most reliable way of detecting head lice is by using a nit comb. A 2008 study showed that “detection combing” is almost four times more effective than just looking at your child’s scalp.
2. Old eggs can remain glued to the hair for up to 6 months, even after successful treatment has eradicated the head lice – so experts advise that you only treat your child if you see a living, moving louse.
3. There is no evidence that head lice prefer clean hair, despite the urban myths.
4. Head lice are more common in girls than boys, and the peak age for infestation is around 7-8 years.
5. Many parents use essential oils such as tea tree oil to repel nits. However, there is no good evidence that this works (but your child will smell nice!).
6. The use of other treatments to prevent nits is controversial. One trial in 2014 showed that 1% 1,2-octanediol spray (which is sold as Hedrin Protect & Go Spray) gave a significant amount of protection from head louse infestation – though it did not always prevent it. However, the official NHS website advises against using chemical sprays regularly to prevent nits in case they irritate the scalp. For what it’s worth, in the 2014 trial, very few children had any problem with the spray, and so we (Heather and John) do choose to use it on our children.
7. If your child has a confirmed head louse infestation, there are various methods you can use to treat it. Evidence suggests that mechanical removal of lice (e.g. by wet-combing with a nit comb) is less effective than chemical methods. However, some parents prefer to try a chemical-free option first, using kits like “BugBuster” or the “NittyGritty” comb.
8. Agents such as dimethicone and cyclomethicone have been shown to be highly effective in clinical trials. Rather than being conventional insecticides, these chemicals work by suffocating the lice or by damaging their skeleton. These treatments are great because, unlike traditional insecticides, head lice can’t develop resistance. Treatments available over the counter include Full Marks Solution and Hedrin 4% dimeticone lotion.
9. There is growing concern that head lice are developing resistance to insecticide treatments such as malathion and permethrin, so we would not recommend them. Make sure you read the label or speak to the pharmacist so you understand what you are buying.
10. Experts suggest that there is no need to use a course of head louse treatment on your child because there are cases of lice at school – the advice is to use a nit comb to check the hair and treat only if you find a live louse.
11. Although head lice are unpleasant and cause itching, they almost never cause serious health problems. If your child gets nits, don’t panic!
I hope this has been helpful. Here are some helpful links and references:
