Patients of the Wrington Vale Medical Practice have the ear of their doctors, nurses and the practice manager – and are working hard to make sure as many patients as possible are also kept up-to-date with important health matters. This is all achieved by means of an organisation we’ve called the Patient Practice Partnership (PPP) for which a number of patients worked out aims and objectives, a constitution and structure, and a diary of events, all with the help and advice of Jose Tarnowski, the practice manager.

Our first AGM in 2006 agreed to what was proposed, and already in our first year, our active management committee, who meet quarterly, have planned the programme of public, open meetings, which so far have attracted good audiences for topics covering the notorious Out of Hours issue, Taking Care of Your Heart, and the Causes and Management of Diabetes.

We have the beginnings of a network of contacts throughout this widespread rural practice who meet occasionally, but mainly act as a conduit of information for the many patients who rarely go to the surgeries, and therefore would miss information displayed on noticeboards there.

Two PPP committee members invested many hours designing and producing a flexible publication which summarises the most vital information for all patients – emergency numbers, procedures for appointments, obtaining test results, prescription renewals, &c.

It’s flexible in that, despite being an A4 sheet, it folds to the size of a credit card, so is both handy and reasonably comprehensive, and its text and background colours are optimum for legibility and prioritising the information.

The PPP persuaded the practice to keep the surgery open during lunch-times to make it possible for people to leave prescription renewals, and has been active in challenging the Primary Care Trust (PCT) about their proposals for removing minor injuries provision from rural GP practices and for reorganising the district nursing service. The PCT have accepted there are important issues for rural practices which are quite different from those in urban areas, and are calling the first meeting of a rural advisory forum early in the new year.

This forum needs to reflect the views of patients’ representatives, parish councils, and organisations like the WI, so Wrington Vale PPP urge patients throughout the rural areas of North Somerset to create their own equivalents of the PPP, and then look to some form of federation, since it’s clear that the monstrous organisation which is the NHS needs to interact directly with patients if it is to fulfil the much trumpeted policy of ‘patient choice’ – whatever that means.

RLT 3.1.07