Nurses

• Practice Nurse Nicola Horrigan
  Our Practice Nurse, Nicola Horrigan, works full time at the practice. On Mondays she holds an afternoon surgery for Baby Immunisations and she works later on Monday evening to offer appointments for those who work during the day and who cannot get to the surgery during normal opening hours. She is here 5 days per week but she does not work on Friday afternoons.
  The Practice Nurse mainly carries out Chronic Disease monitoring, Cervical Smears, Baby Immunisations and Travel Vaccinations.
  She does not routinely provide treatment room services as these are available as a separate community based service.

Healthcare Assistants

• Julie Bryan (f)
  Healthcare Assistants (HCAs) are involved in direct patient care or investigations. They do not have a medical or any nursing qualification and therefore work under the instruction of a doctor or nurse rather than on their own initiative.
  The role of the healthcare assistant is an innovation in the National Health Service and there are an increasing number of such staff in many areas of healthcare including general practice. Their role is being developed to address an increasing shift of work to general practice and their duties include performing investigations requested by clinicians (usually the doctor or nurse) such as phlebotomy (blood taking), blood pressure, weight and height monitoring, urinalysis, pill checks, spirometry (testing only – not interpretation), Glucose Tolerance Testing and INR (Warfarin) fingerprick testing.
  We currently have 1 HCA, Julie Bryan. She is a qualified phlebotomist and has undertaken relevant training accredited by the Royal College of Nurses to ensure that they are competent to perform the tasks they undertake.
  She is not a clinician and performs her role to strict protocols devised by the doctors and practice nurse. She is mentored and her performance regularly monitored and appraised by the practice nurse.
  Please understand that our HCAs are only able to give advice within the boundaries of the protocols under which they operate or by producing patient information leaflets from approved websites.