Dear Nouman and team,
Thank you for everything you are doing to deliver primary care and wider services to your local population.
I am aware of the shocking incident at the practice on Friday 17 September and want to pass on a personal message of support and appreciation for everything you and the practice is doing.
There is no place for violence or aggression towards NHS staff. There is no reasonable excuse and under no circumstances does any individual working in the national, regional or local NHS accept that any individual’s anger should result in any form of physical or verbal assault on our staff.
We recognise the unprecedented contribution of local general practices in supporting patients through the pandemic and remaining there for your patients during these difficult and challenging times.
My personal thanks to you and your team for maintaining services and dealing with often difficult and challenging circumstances. In particular, I would like to thank the staff and their families who were caught up in the events on the day.
Nationally we have maintained daily contact with Manchester health and care commissioning and regional teams who are supporting you with practical steps and will continue to ensure that you and your teams receive the support you need.
If helpful, I would welcome an opportunity to speak to the GPs and staff in a closed doors meeting (virtual or physical) to listen and understand your concerns and ensure that the steps we are taking nationally will ensure that such events do not happen in the future.
Many thanks again for your ongoing work under these difficult circumstances.
READERS' COMMENTS [13]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
Please find enclosed your contractual duties, GMC code of practice and please make available your complaints policy to all your patients, so that they don’t have to resort to violence next time. I would urge you to organise a PPG as soon as possible to understand the patient and their needs, and to ensure that they are being heard and at the centre of everything you do. Thank you again. Thank you. I am also available via Twitter or via a Wellbeing workshop, particularly if you find that your team needs to learn from this event and improve methods of self-resilience. I do hope that you are able to fund the locum cover for any traumatised staff, and please ensure that this does not impact on access. Please do document this SEA, and I look forward to your action points of what you are doing better and how you can improve access to the public before they burn your site down. I have informed my colleagues at the CQC of events, and they will be monitoring proceedings and your site with due intelligence. Please adhere to your duty of candour as set out in regulations. I have also looked at what we are doing nationally with our Zero Tolerance campaign, and I have enclosed a poster for your waiting room. I hope this will help safeguard you and your colleagues locally from future events. Thank you again for swallowing this all up and for brushing it under the carpet. We must maintain that the NHS is open to all patients, and that they do no wrong, and my team is doing their utmost best to get this message out to the nation and the need for you to do more work. I do hope you will see the benefit from this soon as winter approaches, particularly from a trauma and desensitisation point of view, and that you have little further expectation and concerns as we move our ideas forward. Again, thank you for all your hard work.
‘If helpful, I would welcome an opportunity to speak to the GPs’
….you know where I work, I would welcome a little chat.
Isnt that lovely. She can pop into my practice on the way to comfort my staff who were terrorised by a patient earlier in the yearly shortly after she and Ed suggested we should open our doors to all.
How did Pulse come by this letter? It was either shared by the practice, or by NK and her team.
If the latter (as I suspect it is), then its purpose is largely PR for NK. It doesn’t appear to serve any other worthwhile purpose – it’s just face-saving, meaningless PR guff.
What would be helpful on the other hand is a clear and unequivocal rebuttal of the DM and DT claims, which comes straight from the top of NHSE and carries NK’s signature.
So, why isn’t this happening?
Surely such a public statement is NK’s professional duty?
The press and other public claims are clearly nonsense (F2F when last measured was 56%, down from 80% pre-pandemic, and at a time when the pandemic is still raging with 40K new positive diagnoses a day and almost 200 deaths), and an expression of otherwise aimless anger and frustration. We have been set up as a straw-man to focus everyone’s frustrations on. There has been no comment about the evolving outpatient disaster, or the fact that most of these contacts are also now remote – why is that?
The irony is that the threatened respiratory virus winter surge – if it comes – will almost certainly cause the government to tell us to go back to mostly remote again.
Well said. We need stronger leadership that’s clear. Time is over for poster campaigns and the odd tweet.
I must have missed the letter to Daily Mail.
Patrufini s makes great translation (of NK language to English). Just can’t shake that feeling of how and when they (NHSE) will again hit us, and how hard. Why am I still doing this job…. could make a good HGV driver (similar income), no phone calls, no instant messages, tasks, med reviews, knocks on the door, pcn nonsense etc etc… Or could find some leadership role in the City, unless Brexit made sure there’s no point in that. Either or, planning exit from GP is what I teach my trainees, nothing good to see here
Pulse removed my comment..I am surprised and shocked by honesty and clarity being silenced.
Apologies Some”Bloke.
Thank you for reinstating it.
Congratulations Patrufini.
It seems that you have turned the moderating tide?
(missed your commentary the first time around and was curious see what required censorship).
Yes Decorum. Just a simple honest reminder letter I wrote to myself, to say thank you.
Well done, Patrufini.
‘The irony is that the threatened respiratory virus winter surge – if it comes – will almost certainly cause the government to tell us to go back to mostly remote again’ – this sounds like far too much common sense to be implemented.
Thank you Patrufini.
Surely the only letter GPs want to get from Dr K is a grovelling apology, and an announcement of her resignation?