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Castle Gardens Medical Centre
The Practice
Castle Gardens surgery is a congenial predominantly female practice situated in the town centre close to Colchester Castle and about 3 miles from Colchester General Hospital. Our female predominance probably arises from the historical roots of the practice succeeding from the first female GP to set up in Colchester.
We share premises with our neighbouring practice ‘East Hill Surgery’ which is also a teaching practice and undertake some shared teaching with them which has proved popular and which we plan to develop. There are 4 WTE partners serving a population of 7,500.
Dr Philippa Gear MB, MRCP, MRCGP, DRCOG (full time) is a GP trainer.
Dr Stuart Rudge MBBS, DRCOG, DGM (full time) works as the doctor to Colchester United Football Team and has an interest in sports medicine. He enjoys involvement in teaching and has supervised nurse practitioner training. He participates in the ‘Shared Care’ scheme for drug mis-users.
Dr Barbara Murray MA, MRCP, MRCGP, DCH, DRCOG (½ time) is a GP trainer. She also participates in the ‘Shared Care’ scheme for drug mis-users.
Dr Rasool MBBS, MRCOG (pt 1) (full time) has a special interest in obstetrics and gynaecology. She is Lead Clinician in Diabetes for the PCT.
Dr Chumbley MBBS, DFFP, DRCOG, DGUM, MRCGP, Diploma in Musculoskeletal Medicine (½ time) has special interests in sexual health and rheumatology.
The Practice
We have two practice nurses who hold regular Asthma, Diabetic COPD and Travel clinics and our health care assistant runs a Stop Smoking service. A community midwife holds an antenatal clinic weekly at the surgery and a counselling service is provided at the surgery by trainees from the ‘Life Force’ service. There are weekly practice meetings which our attached District Nurses attend regularly. Our Link Health Visitor also attends the surgery regularly to meet each GP individually to discuss problem cases and MacMillan nurses join us for 2-monthly multi-disciplinary palliative care meetings. The whole practice is enthusiastic about education and we hold regular monthly educational clinical meetings for clinical staff, where topics of interest are presented and discussed, including audits and SEAs, and invited speakers attend.
Our computer system is Phoenix TPP ‘System One’. The system is fully networked and each computer has access to the internet and e-mail.
We are linked to the Health Authority for registrations and to the hospital for pathology results and x-ray reports.
We consider ourselves a caring, nurturing educational organisation and enjoy teaching a variety of learners including registrars, F2 doctors, nurse practitioners and pharmacists participating in the independent prescribers course.
The Registrar
The registrar is provided with his / her own consulting room and computer and fully stocked medical bag. Formal teaching occurs in tutorials which are provided twice weekly by Dr Gear and Dr Murray. There is a half-day for personal study and the registrar attends the VTS day release course. The whole team is involved in the registrar’s education with input from the nurses’ clinics, the audit clerk and the practice manager. Debriefing sessions after surgeries and queries during surgeries are met by the trainer and the partners are always happy to provide this in their absence. Out of hours experience is provided by Colchester PCT OOH, supervised by trainers from the Colchester VTS scheme. Dr Murray is one of the GP-trainers supervising registrars out of hours and Dr Rasool and Dr Rudge also work for this service.
For further information or to arrange a visit please contact Dr Murray at drbarbara.murray@btinternet.com or Dr Gear or Jane Frost, practice manager, on 01206 866626.