The Old School Surgery

About the practice

The Old School Surgery team put patient care is at the heart of everything they do.

The surgery is at home in modern, purpose built facilities in the middle of a characterful old school house.

The surgery offers a calm, reassuring environment, with an ethos of great support.

The team includes a good skill mix of clinicians, from Clinical Pharmacists, a mental health nurse and nurse practitioners who take the majority of the home visits and nursing home rounds. All are supported by the admin team and receptionists.

The practice also offers mental health specific appointments and minor surgery.

Clinicians hold daily meetings to discuss difficult cases with peers and a weekly educational meeting to discuss individual topic areas.

Every day, a lead GP is allocated as the supervising doctor with blocked slots for any clinicians to access for support or advice. GPs have named areas of expertise and this is communicated regularly.

The practice offers same day appointments, bookable appointments with a named GP, telephone appointments and same day telephone triage appointments.

The Old School Surgery enjoys great relationships with practices in the East Cluster, the Inner City and East Practice cluster.

Working environment, values and culture

The Old School Surgery aims to foster a working environment with a healthy mixture of professionalism and support.

Individual development and a strong team spirit are both encouraged.

The team endeavours to:

• Put patients first
• Take pride in what we do
• Respect others
• Strive to be the best
• Act with integrity

All clinical and other staff are encouraged to attend the daily lunchtime practice meeting to ensure staff feel included and work collaboratively. Staff are encouraged to discuss tricky cases, handover patients they are worried about or just sound off about their day.

The practice enjoys a low staff turnover and the most recent staff survey reports that staff find the surgery a good place to work.

The whole team, and specific teams within the practice, enjoy both regular team meetings and all get together frequently for social events.

What we offer

Staff can work in a variety of flexible ways, including term-time, job share, part-time, full-time, and school hours, for example.

Staff can also take advantage of unpaid leave, compassionate leave, carer’s leave, paternal leave, maternity leave and sabbaticals wherever agreed and appropriate.

Learning and development

All new starters benefit from a full induction programme which takes place over the first two weeks of employment. Each induction is job specific but all include meetings with every single team to learn what each team is about and how each interacts to support each other and the new staff member.

All clinical staff are given a buddy or mentor and this is on-going, and they are allocated a supervisor to whom they have access to every working day.

The practice also supports paid leave for courses, funds development courses and actively encourage development and learning for all staff.

Our patients

The patient list represents a mixed demographic in 50% of the list, with the remaining 50% being students from the University of the West of England.

A popular practice, their Friends and Family score shows 100% would recommend the surgery. Recent patient forums have also resulted in very positive feedback.