Services

Nurse Clinics

Practice Nurses

Our Practice Nurses offer a range of services such as Heart disease, Diabetic, Rhematology monitoring, Asthma, & Well Woman clinics, and offfer travel & health advice. Appointments can be made by contacting the surgery one week in advance.

District Nurse Team

The District Nurse Team are qualified nurses who, when necessary, attend to patients in their own homes. There are clinic sessions every day, with sessions through the week for ear syringing, dressings, taking blood, etc.

BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Please ring the surgery to make an appointment on 0151 722 2744. The contact number for District Nurses is 0151 285 3643.

Health Visitor Sessions

Our Health Visitor, Liz Wilson, is available for help and advice, and can be contacted on 0151 222 0493. Well baby clinics are held every Tuesday between 1.30pm and 2.30pm. The clinic is conducted by Liz Wilson, and Annettte O’Connor (Community Nursery Nurse).

Midwives

The Midwives can be contacted on 0151 708 9988. Antenatal clinic is held each Friday between 11am and 12.30pm and is BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Counselling

Counselling is held twice weekly at the surgery. Patients are referred by their doctor and the service is strictly BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is held twice weekly on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons at the surgery. Patients are referred by their doctor and the service is strictly BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Phlebotomy

We hold a Phlebotomy (Blood) Clinic twice weekly on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Pat Linser is the Phelbotomist and the service is BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Home Visiting Guidelines

In order to ensure that the best use is made of your GP services, please attend the surgery whenever possible. If you need advice, you can contact NHS DIRECT on 0845 4647 and out of hours UC24 on 0151 220 3685.

GP visit recommended

Home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving medical opinion, in cases involving:

• The terminally ill.

• The truly housebound patient for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration in their medical condition.

GP visit may be useful

• Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP's visit.

GP visit is not usual

In most of these cases a visit would not be an appropriate use of your GP's time or best for you:

• Heart Attack - severe crushing chest pain. The best approach is to call an emergency paramedic ambulance.

• Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel, to the surgery. It is not harmful to take a child with fever outside.

• Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, general malaise, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the doctor's surgery. Transport arrangements are the responsibility of the patients or their carers.

Additional Information

Disabled patients

Access for Disabled Patients is available at the front of the building and specially designed toilet facilities are also available. Reserved disabled car parking is also available at the front of the building.

Ambulances

The reception supervisor is responsible for ambulance booking. If you need an ambulance for your journey to hospital please give the surgery at least 48 hours notice.

Medical records

Patients can access their own written and Computerised Medical notes, although the records may not be removed from the practice premises. Assistance is given by the practice manager if access is required to the computer record and in this circumstance a member of staff will stay with you at all times to ensure confidentiality of other patients records. If copies or a computer printout are required, a charge is made for this to cover costs incurred. Access to medical records for people outside the health care team (or who are involved in the patient's clinical care) is only given with the patient's express written permission.
District nurses and health visitors have access to the medical records of the patients in their care.

Pharmacy

PORTERS PHARMACY
Valley Medical Centre 77 Hartsbourne Ave Liverpool L25 1RS
Tel/Fax: 0151 722 4221
Email: porterschemist@npanet.co.uk

OPENING HOURS:

MONDAY 9am to 6pm
TUESDAY 9am to 6pm
WEDNESDAY 9am to 6pm
THURSDAY 9am to 1pm
FRIDAY 9am to 6pm

SERVICES

DISPENSING

We undertake dispensing of both NHS and private prescriptions. We carry a large stock of medicines and can also obtain medicines not normally stocked, within a few hours.
Unless otherwise requested, all medicines are dispensed in "child resistant containers". They are not child proof, (nothing is), so please, KEEP ALL MEDICINES OUT OF CHILDREN'S REACH.

PATIENT MEDICATION RECORDS

When a prescription is dispensed, a record is kept. The computer record will alert us to the possibility of interaction with other medication and will print any necessary warnings on the medicine label. Our records can also be used to check for interactions when buying over the counter medicines.
It is in your interest to have all your prescriptions dispensed at the same place, to ensure a full record of medicines is kept.

MEDICINE SALES

During our opening hours we always have a pharmacist present. He or she is always available to advise on the treatment of minor illnesses, and is happy to explain the use and purpose of prescribed and bought medicines.

EMERGENCY SUPPLIES

Under certain circumstances we may be able to make an emergency supply of a prescription only medicine. We can only do this in a genuine emergency, and as it is not done under the NHS the full costs of the medicine have to be paid.

PRESCRIPTION DOSAGE CASSETTES FILLED

We can help patients who may find it difficult remembering to take medicines by providing a "Monitored Dosage Device". These are usually cassettes or cards filled with one week's supply of medicine, split into different times of the day for each day of the week. There is currently no charge for this service, but may need agreement from patient's doctor.
We can also arrange for a pharmacist to visit to discuss any problems or questions you may have about your medicine.

If you know of someone who may benefit from this please get in touch.

FREE COLLECTION & DELIVERY

We can arrange for your prescription to be collected from your surgery and to be dispensed ready for you to collect. We will also provide a free delivery service for the elderly and house bound.

MEDICINE MANAGEMENT

If you have trouble remembering to reorder your regular monthly prescription, we can arrange to request them from your surgery each month and to have them ready for you to collect from the pharmacy or to be delivered.

THE SHOP

We stock traditional chemist shop goods:
* Medicines * Oral Hygiene
* Baby care * Foot Care
* Hair Care * Toiletries
* Make-up and Skin Care * Perfumes
* Sanitary Protection * Dietary Products
* Large range of 99p lines.

On request, we can also order products not normally stocked, just ask.
Although we have a good representation of traditional "chemist shop" products, we are moving away from this area and will be concentrating much more on medical products and services.