Many of you will have seen by now that a 2nd vaccine (the Oxford/Astra-Zeneca vaccine) has been approved for use against Covid-19.  It seems likely that GP surgeries will possibly be involved in the administration of this jab, but we are still awaiting formal directions for how this might work, when it might take place, and who will be eligible in the initial stages etc.

This is obviously wonderful news as we all hope it will help us take a step back towards normality in the coming year, however can we please ask that patients do not ring us to enquire about this jab at the present time, as we are already understaffed, and have no current plans or information that we can provide to patients at this point.

You can rest assured that if/when a plan is in place, we will post information on our website/facebook page explaining what the procedures will be, and we thankyou for your understanding in this matter.

We will be following national guidance in terms of who can be vaccinated, so as to make the process as fair and transparent as possible.
So watch this space, and here's hoping for some encouraging news in the weeks to come. Thankyou all.


SHIELDING PATIENTS - Letters for those patients considered extremely vulnerable are being sent out by the Welsh Government / the Chief Medical Officer, and we are not able to produce these letters in the surgery, thankyou.

Following our previous update, we would just like to thank all our patients for the support we have received so far this week, and to highlight that we appreciate all your help with trying to only contact us for genuine emergencies at the present time while we have a skeleton staff.

We have support from, and regular contact with the Local Health Board, and are simply taking it a day at a time to try and maintain enough GPs/nurses/admin staff in the building (as well as working from home!) in order to safely run our service.

Unfortunately, the self-isolations / recovery times that are required by multiple staff is likely to stretch over the Christmas period, and potentially into the New Year, and so we do hope you can bear with us during this very difficult period.

We would  like to take this opportunity to thank all our staff who are picking up extra hours, coming in on their days off, working from home when needed, and generally taking on more than ever(!); as always they are going above and beyond - we're sure you'd agree they've been fantastic this year, and we're all very proud of their efforts! 

We understand that the current Covid regulations are difficult for everyone, but we are hopeful that with vaccines finally becoming available - perhaps 2021 will be a slightly more straightforward year then 2020 has proven to be (between the pandemic and flooding!)

Merry Christmas to all our patients from everyone here at Eglwysbach, and please stay safe over the festive period!!

Following our previous update last week, we have now unfortunately  had multiple further staff members who need to self-isolate or who are unwell with covid (including 2 nurses and 6 GPs), meaning we will be significantly understaffed this coming week.
We appreciate that all of our patients try to be considerate when contacting us normally, but would ask that for this week, and especially tomorrow (Monday) if you could only contact us if you feel your issue is a serious problem or an emergency, this will help to ensure that the limited GP time we can provide goes to the most appropriate patients / problems.
We have been lucky to get this far into the pandemic without this level of absence, however with the increasing covid levels in the community, and large numbers of patients we have been needing to see face to face, it seems inevitable it would perhaps happen here at some point as it has in so many other surgeries in recent months.

Thankyou all once again for your support at this trying time, we can assure you we are doing everything we can to mitigate the effects of these issues, and we are doing our best to source locum GPs at this time of high demand, but our options are currently very limited and we will need to prioritise urgent care for our most vulnerable patients in the coming days.

We would like to thank all our patients for continuing to do their best in following the new systems that we have had to put in place to help us deal safely with the pandemic.  We continue to do extremely well despite the frequent new barriers we are facing; usually dealing with 150+ phone triage a day, 30+ e-consults a day, 80+ pre-booked phone appointments daily, 30+ face to face GP appts a day, in addition to the hundreds of results, hospital letters and referrals that we deal with daily. 
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we continue to have multiple staff needing to stay off from work (self-isolating, unwell etc) on a regular basis, including medical, nursing and administrative roles.  Due to the fast-changing nature of the situation, this may necessitate last-minute changes to your appointments eg location / staff member etc.  
We hope you can all continue to bear with us during these very difficult times, as everyone continues to do their best and our admin staff in particular are often shouldering significant amounts of work over and above their usual highly pressured roles, so please be patient with them, thankyou again.