The Patient Participation Group at Thornley House have campaigned for over 5 years to get a pharmacy established at Thornley House Medical Centre Hyde.
There have been many obstacles over those years that prevented us from achieving that goal. But as always if people unite and fight for a cause inevitably they will eventually win through. We believe that if patients give the pharmacy some time to establish itself properly then within weeks it will be an asset to the patients at Thornley House and to the local community. I think it is only fair to say that as this pharmacy is a 100 hour pharmacy, its running costs are more than the average pharmacy. This means the more people use and support it, the more it will help to stay open and make it permanent. It also increases the choice of pharmacies patients can use as there is also the Co-op pharmacy, Boots and Lloyds in the centre of Hyde too.
Why don't you attend the Patient Participation Group meetings to raise issues you have or share compliments with other fellow patients and staff. All are welcome. They are usually held on the last Thursday of the month. Do check the notice board in the waiting room or the events section on the home page of the practice website for where the next meeting is and also when it is held. The next meeting is on 30th April at 2pm
Don Hunter
Patient Participation Group Chairman
Haughton Thornley Medical Centre PPG held a stall at part of the Hyde Health Fair at Asda, Hyde. The fair was run by NHS Tameside & Glossop as part of the Health is For Life Festival
. The festival was opened by the Mayor & Mayoress of Tameside
. The stall was run by PPG members Margaret Rickson, Alan Yates (pictured above), Sheila Caldecott and Yvonne Bennett.
Despite atrocious weather many people attended as they started shopping. The main theme of the stall was how www.htmc,co.uk assists those patients who wish to take charge of their own health conditions. The stall featured the work of the PPG and how it has achieved an Anti-coagulant clinic and the opening of a Pharmacy next door to the Practice in Hyde. The Pharmacy is open for 100 hours per week, which means it is open from 8:00am to 10.30pm Mon – Sat and 9.00 am - 10:00 pm Sunday and Bank Holidays.
Because of the new anti-coagulant clinic, over 100 patients now attend the Warfarin Clinic instead of having to travel to the hospital. Margaret Rickson, an active member of the PPG, with support from her colleagues of the PPG managed to get the clinic up and running in Hyde. Margaret, who is 80 and has various health problems, used to have pay for a taxi to take her to and from the hospital, which may have lasted for up to 4 hours a round trip. Now over 100 patients benefit and the timetable, including travel is now reduced to 30 minutes maximum and at a fracion of the cost too!
The stall also highlighted the practice website (www.htmc.co.uk) . The Mayoress was particularly impressed with this site especially as it provides a link to local transport services to various hospitals, which includes timetables too. The Mayoress recently disclosed in the Advertiser
how she suffers from Dystonia
. She herself travels to Hope Hospital.The www.htmc.co.uk website is accessible to everyone including non-patients. It gives advice on what to do when attending out-of-hours services as well as up-to-date medical advice. Links are provided to NHS and other reliable websites and is updated on a daily basis. The practice are trying to make this the first place patients go to when they want access to health information or services available in the NHS and then to use this to access other trusted services / knowledge rather than going to Google or other unvetted sources where the quality of information may not be as good. And remember - you can always pop in to see your doctor or nurse if there is something that is still troubling you unlike websites that have no "face".
Many of the facilities of Haughton Thornley Medical Centres were highlighted. This also included the use of our Minor Operations Theatre, spacious midwives clinic and podiatry clinic which was also available to patients of Thornley House and Haughton Vale.
If you would like to know more and are not a patient of the practice but wondering how you could also get access to your records then why don't you contact the local Care Record Development Board and pass your details on to them?
Pictured below is also the stand for the Patient Advisory and Liaison Service
and a quiet moment when they could share ideas with each other.
0161 367 7910
