Patient Involvement Group
Church Street Practice, The Health Centre,
Mably Way, Grove, OX12 9BN

Home > Articles > Practice Nursing

Practice Nursing

To bring you up to date with what’s going on within the nursing team at Church Street focussing on:

• Who we are
• What we do
• How things have changed and are changing
• How we feel about it

The Team

Lesley Boler	Team Leader & Specialist Practitioner. Lesley is able to deal with illnesses & you may be advised to see her in preference to a GP when you ask for an appointment
Denise Ledbury	Practice Nurses
Mary Elliott
Zoe Young
Kate Hannaby
Susan Sui	Health Care Assistant. Sue has extended her role to include assisting at minor operations, advising on smoking cessation, new patient checks, performing ECG’s & taking blood.
Lyn Nicholls	Phlebotomists
Maureen Leafe

What We Do

The services we offer are many and varied, but because practice nursing is completely different from hospital nursing, we all enter this role with lots to learn. Not all the nurses are yet fully trained in areas such as Family Planning, Asthma Management & Travel Health. For this reason receptionists usually ask what an appointment is for, so that you will be booked with an appropriately trained nurse.

You may see a nurse for any of the following;

Wound care Cervical smear Family Planning Minor injuries Smoking cessation Stroke clinic Healthy heart clinic Blood tests	Ear syringing Blood pressure management Travel vaccinations and advice Weight management Diabetes clinic Asthma clinic New patient check ECGs
Immunisations/injections – including flu & pneumonia jabs, baby and preschool immunisations and boosters

How Things Have Changed

In recent years there had been a huge shift towards chronic disease management & health promotion. Practice nurses have taken on much of what traditionally were routine appointments for GP’s, thus releasing them to see more urgent or complex cases. This is why you will now see a nurse for your routine diabetic, asthma, stroke, healthy heart etc. checks. In turn, some of OUR more routine tasks have been handed to the phlebotomists & health care assistant, So, if you require a routine blood test or blood pressure check, etc. your appointment will be made with them.

Practice nursing is continually changing & we are continually learning & developing our role accordingly.

How We Feel

The general consensus amongst our team is that practice nursing is a fabulous profession…

Our main concern is that time is often against us. The introduction of extended roles, the meticulous recording of clinical information (yes, we have to meet targets just like everyone else!) & the “squeezing in” of extra patients (especially since the closure of Wantage Hospital Casualty) means that it is very hard to always fit everything into allotted appointment times & consequently we sometimes find ourselves running quite late.

However, we love our work & feel we do it from the heart. We like to think that we are approachable, accommodating, obliging & generally a “nice bunch of girls” and that we offer all our patients a really high quality, caring service.

Denise Ledbury, Practice Nurse
Extract from PHCT meeting presentation