Whitley House Surgery

Services

New Patients

It is the policy of this practice that all new patients applying to register with us provide evidence of their residency in our practice area. Patients already residing in the UK will need to provide either a current driving licence or a copy of a utility bill, a solicitor's letter or rent book, dated within the last three months.

New patients arriving from overseas need to provide similar proof of residency plus their passport and any relevant visas.

If you have been issued with an NHS medical card you will also need to bring this with you when registering. If you have been registered previously with a doctor in the UK, you will need to know their name and address to complete your registration.

The receptionist will provide you with a registration pack and take you through the registration procedure, ie using the equipment provided you will need to take your blood pressure, measure your height and weight, complete the forms enclosed, retake your blood pressure, then return the completed pack to the receptionist for processing. Any regular medication, including contraception will need to be recorded on the form.

Please ensure that you book a routine appointment with a doctor to obtain your first prescription from the surgery. We will not refuse an application for registration on the basis of the applicant's race, gender, age, sexual orientation, social class, religion, appearance, disability or medical condition. We will however refuse applications made by those living outside our practice area.

Antenatal Clinics

We have community midwives attached to the surgery.

Antenatal clinics are held here at Whitley House on Monday morning 10.00 - 11.20am and Tuesday afternoon 1.30 - 3.40pm.

Our midwives are:

Amber Jones mobile telephone number 07983 338421
Cathy Ross mobile telephone number 07887 636747

Baby Clinic

The baby clinic is held on the first and third Wednesday of the month between 1.00 - 3.00pm. Here you can see a health visitor, have your baby weighed or seek advice.

Travel Clinics

In order to allocate sufficient resources to core areas of disease management and general health issues, the practice regrets that it is unable to provide a full travel clinic service. Nonetheless, we do still have a limited service in place, details of which can be obtained from reception.

Patients with travel health queries are advised to contact the following excellent sources of information and advice.

MASTA (particularly helpful in advising on inoculation)

Tel: 0113 238 7500 www.masta.org
Travel Health www.travelhealth.co.uk
Fit For Travel www.fitfortravel.scot.nhs.uk.

Flu Clinic

Flu clinics for specific patients commence during September each year. Look out for signs in the surgery and reminders on prescription counterfoils regarding the timing of these then contact reception to make your appointment if you are eligible.

Advice Healthy Living

Alcohol

The accepted safe limit for a man is 21 units a week and 14 units for a woman.

Smoking

If you are a smoker who wants to quit, help is at hand. Call the NHS Stop Smoking Helpline on 0800 085 2113 (calls are free from a landline)

Alternatively, speak to reception for information on local initiatives.

Exercise

It Helps Reduce Weight
It Helps Reduce Stress

Once you have found a form of exercise you enjoy, do it:

  • Often enough - two or three times a week for 20-30 minutes
  • Hard enough - to make you fairly breathless
  • Long enough - it must become part of your life for good

Remember: if you are not used to exercise start slowly and build up gradually. The British Heart Foundation recommends three brisk 20-minute walks each week.

Healthy Diet

Eat a high fibre, low fat diet. Reduce salt intake and aim to eat five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables each day. Remember to drink plenty of water.

NHS Choices

This is an online service that enables patients to make important decisions about their personal health and lifestyle choices. It provides a 'one stop shop' of easily accessible information for everybody. There are three main resources within it:

  • Live well - encouraging health living by providing access to information that will promote positive changes in health.
  • Health A-Z providing access to the evidence base of the NHS to allow better understanding of conditions and treatment options.
  • You choose - enabling patients to view data about hospitals, conditions and procedures giving comparative information that will demonstrate the particular strengths of individual hospitals to assist the patient in making the choice for where to request a procedure to be carried out. NHS Choices is available at www.nhs.uk

Accidents

The nearest casualty department is at Broomfield Hospital.