Birchwood Medical Practice

About the practice

Birchwood is in purpose-built premises where the facilities include a staff kitchen/rest area and staff toilets/showers. The building had landlord improvements in 2019.

The team is dedicated, hardworking, caring and supportive of each other and loves to have fun too.

Birchwood works as part of the Connexus primary care network with Stockwood, Nightingale, Birchwood, Wells Road and Priory.

Birchwood offers a broad mix of appointment types, with dedicated slots for the On Call GP to book into other GP’s sessions to allow for continuity of care for patients they triage. Same day/urgent appointments are available, along with 24 hours in advance, 48 hours in advance, 4 days in advance and 6 days in advance. We release appointments daily for up to 6 days in advance as well has having routine appointment available within the month. We also offer an eConsult option to allow patients to submit their administrative and medical queries online, without the need to wait in the call queue.

Access is available to early morning appointments 7-8am for chronic disease management, plus we also specialise in minor surgery, insulin conversation and our patients are supported by two diabetes expert clinicians.

As part of Connexus, the practice also offers enhanced access on occasion, before and after normal working hours during the week.

Working environment, values and culture

The team at Birchwood aim to provide a health centre of excellence delivering wider health services to the community locally. Their mission is to listen to patients and provide a caring experience delivering excellent patient outcomes.

Birchwood has a strong team ethic. Their motto is “always assume positive intent”, and they work together and support each other whilst having fun at the same time.

The turnover of staff is low and the volume of applications received in response to advertised vacancies indicates that the practice enjoys a good reputation locally as a great place to work.

The team gets together for multidisciplinary meetings with clinicians and non-clinicians as well as out of work fun.

What we offer

Delivering patient services in line with their needs is the key priority so the needs of the business have to come first. However, where flexibility can be offered the practice is happy to discuss requests for flexible working.

The staff handbook outlines full details of the terms and conditions around family friendly benefits such as unpaid leave, paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave, a childcare voucher scheme and carers leave.

Learning and development

The practice is focused on developing the skills of clinicians on a regular basis to continually reflect and improve on services for patients and is open to supporting enhanced training to support new entrants in their career aims in line with the strategic business development.

New members of staff are welcomed and supported with a full induction that includes a buddy scheme, mentoring scheme and social events. Induction is tailored to the individual as most new entrants arrive with different skill sets and there’s no one size fits all.

Registered clinicians are offered one weeks’ study leave a year (pro rata) and the majority of mandatory training takes place in-house. Non-clinicians and non-registered clinicians are invited to attend LMC courses as part of their individual training plan along with mandatory NHS e-learning taking place yearly.

Mutual support and peer learning includes regular meetings to discuss cases, MDT meetings, access to a lead GP for support, GP expertise in different areas, etc.

The practice also dedicates a section of each GP practice meeting to review clinical areas for discussion, for example case histories or checking protocols. There is also a dedicated Journal Club to share learning and education sessions delivered both internally and from external third parties, for example IRIS+.

Our patients

The practice list mainly includes people of working age with a growing number of children as working couples have families of their own. The practice also has a large number of patients requiring chronic disease management.

Patients highly rate the practice on NHS Choices and for the National GP Survey. Birchwood also ranks in the Top 3 in South Bristol and Top 10 in Bristol (Source: Bristol Post Dec 2020).