Peterborough GP surgery works festive bank holidays to ease demand

Staff at a GP surgery worked two festive bank holidays in a bid to ease an expected reopening surge.

Staff at Thistlemoor Medical Centre, in Peterborough, opted to stay open on Tuesday, 27 December and Monday, 2 January to deal with demand.

The surgery has 40 consulting rooms and 15 doctors as well as a "surge hub", which is staffed in times of particularly high need.

"The pressure in the NHS at the moment is palpable," said GP Dr Neil Modha.

The surge hub is usually open to help cope with winter pressures, but is now expected to stay operational until June.

"This is the first time over the Christmas bank holidays and the new year bank holidays that we were asked whether we would help support the system by opening," Dr Modha said.

The centre currently sees about 80% of patients face-to-face, "pretty much what we were doing before Covid", Dr Modha said.

"We're very lucky here, we've got an amazing team who've gone above and beyond. I think it's about trying to do the best that we can do, but not burning out our staff."

Dr Modha, who has been with the practice since 2008, said staff had been consulted and chose to work.

"Although we're busy now (Tuesday) it would have been even busier if we hadn't been open those two days," he said.

Annaleah Blease, clinical lead nurse, said that without the surge hub, patients waiting a long time for an appointment would probably end up resorting to the 111 service, or their local accident and emergency unit.

"The problem is when they don't get their appointments when they need it, when they first start being unwell, then that's when the illness increases," she said.

The rising levels of demand for the service meant the surge hub could stay open all year round, but it's not sustainable for the staff, she said.

"We've got a great team morale at the moment but we will end up having burn-out," she warned.

The centre said with patient lists growing by up to 2,000 a year, it would need to recruit more doctors to keep up its level of services.

Patient Rosetta Staffieri, 65, was in the surgery on Tuesday but said it was often hard to get in.

"You have to do everything online, and then you have to write a big list of what's wrong with you, then you have a telephone consultation before you can come in," she said.

But despite the bureaucracy, Ms Staffieri said her practice was "very, very good".

However, Jeremy Dixon, also 65, said he found it "very, very easy to get an appointment" and was asked to come into surgery a few hours after going online.

"I thought it would be busy today being the first day back after the holidays. I'm happy, they look after me well here," he said.

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