Practice Profile
Aims
Our practice aims to provide a caring and friendly atmosphere within which we help members of our community to achieve and attain optimum levels of health.

The Partnership
Our partnership consists of 6 full-time male partners and three part time female partners. We also employ a female GP retainer and a male salaried GP. We have traditionally run a personaIised list system where each patient is under the care of a named doctor and this system continues with the new General Medical Services 2 contract (GMS2).

The Coleridge Medical Centre partnership actually provides medical care for in excess of 16,000 patients from Ottery St Mary and the surrounding villages, hamlets and farms to a distance of approximately 5 miles from Ottery St Mary.
Compared to the rest of the country there are higher than average numbers of over 65 year olds and under 5 year olds.
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The Surgery
The surgery in Canaan Way was purpose built in 1982 financed by the partnership using a cost rent scheme. There have been 2 extensions to the original building to provide more clinical and administration rooms. In 2000 a self-contained unit was built adjoining the surgery and this is rented to the COOP pharmacy.

Branch Surgeries
The partnership owns a branch surgery in Whimple serving a population of approximately 1,200 patients. We also run a branch surgery from rented premises in Newton Poppleford.

Ottery St Mary Community Hospital
The local community hospital was rebuilt on its present site in 1995. It provides 31 GP beds and also has a minor injuries unit, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and X ray facilities. Rowan ward allows care and assessment of elderly patients requiring psychogeriatric input (an EMI unit). The health visitors also have offices at the hospital.
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Staff
The practice employs a practice manager, assistant practice manager, five practice nurses, two health care assistants, twenty two reception and secretarial staff, two records summarisers, an office junior and a filing clerk. The wider healthcare team based at the surgery incorporates two midwives, seven community nurses, a school nurse, one community psychiatric nurse (CPNs) and two hospice care nurses. There is a midwife led maternity unit at Honiton hospital 5 miles away.
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Records
Coleridge Medical Centre has been a pioneer in general practice computing and has been paperless since 1975 using the Exeter Protechnic software. The system provides full clinical records facilities as well as facilities for repeat prescribing, disease management screens and appointment systems. Our records system is linked to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital pathology system and we are linked to the general practice registration system. Patient records can be securely accessed from branch surgeries either from remote terminals or via a practice laptop computer.

Additional services
We are part of the Devon Primary Care Trust. We offer child health surveillance, family planning services, minor surgery and flexible sigmoidoscopy procedures. Two partners hold clinical assistant posts one in care of the elderly confused and the other in Reablement.
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On Call arrangements
The partners operate a rota system to cover daytime emergencies between 8am and 6.30pm. Out of hours care is co-ordinated by Devon Doctors On Call. The practice doctors actively participate in covering shifts to ensure a health care professional is available 24 hours a day.

General Practice Training
The practice has been involved in training future GPs since 1984. Our two trainers are attached to the South West Deanery Department of General Practice. The vocational training scheme is excellent and all our GP registrars are based on this local scheme.

Students
As well as training GPs we also encourage medical students to spend time in our practice to experience general practice. We have had students from many British Medical Schools as well as from America, Germany, Finland and New Zealand.
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Practice Charter
All members of the  team will endeavor to do their best to offer patients a service of high quality and will try to meet their needs as best they can.
In particular:
- Patients have the right to be partners in the care they receive.
- Patients have the right to be given courtesy and respect at all times.
- Patients have the right to be treated in a confidential manner.
- We will endeavor to answer the phone promptly and courteously.
- Doctors and nurses will try to start surgeries on time and will try to keep to time. If however, due to medical necessity, there is a delay of more than thirty minutes or if the doctor is called out on emergency, the patients will be informed and offered a chance to make an alternative appointment.
- Patients have the right to information about their own health, particularly illness and its treatment, alternative forms of treatment and the likely outcome of the illness.
- Patients have the right to access their health records subject to any limitations in the law.
- The Practice will offer advice and seek to inform patients of steps to promote their good health and avoid illness.
- We will review your long-term medication on a regular agreed basis.
- The Practice will keep patients informed about services available by means of the practice leaflet, newsletters, notice-boards and this website. Every effort will be made to keep this information up to date.
- If your doctor believes you need a second opinion the necessary referral will be made promptly.
-The Practice is a training practice for student doctors and nurses as well as qualified doctors and nurses training in General Practice. Patients will always be informed if a student is present and will have the right to decline.
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- Patients have the right to complain if they unhappy with the service they have received.
- GPs will make a prompt reply to written queries within seven working days allowing for absence due to holidays or sick leave.
- Urgent prescriptions will be made available on the same day but routine prescriptions will only be available after forty-eight hours.
- The Practice welcomes any suggestions from patients about how the service may be improved. A response to the suggestion, will be given by an appropriate member of the Practice team after due consideration.
With these rights come responsibilities and for patients this means;
 -To be courteous and to respect staff at all times. Remember the staff are generally following the doctors’ instructions. Neither verbal abuse nor violence in any form will be tolerated.
 -To attend appointments on time or to give the Practice adequate notice if unable to do so, so that the appointment can be reused.
- An appointment is only for one person-when another member of the family needs to be seen please try and ask for a second appointment or check first that the doctor has time to deal with both problems.
- To inform your doctor promptly if you are seriously ill.
- To only request home visits when they are appropriate, for example the patient is too ill to travel to surgery or if there is genuinely no other way of being seen.
- To only use the Out-of Hours service when an illness or query will not wait until regular surgery hours.
- To store medication in a safe and appropriate manner in particular keeping medicines out of reach of children.
- To only order medication that is needed and to dispose of out of date medications in a safe manner, for example at the chemists.
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- To tell your doctor if you are using alternative medication or treatments as this may alter the treatment that is proposed.
- To inform us if you should change your name, address or phone number.
- To acknowledge good service as this is very encouraging to our staff who are generally doing their best!

The History of General Practice in Ottery St Mary
Early Twentieth Century
In 1900 the new century saw three independent general practitioners caring for the people of Ottery St Mary. They were Drs Mortimer Reynolds, Bartlett and Fielding. Drs Johnson and Ponton followed these doctors.

Dr Ponton lived and practised at Ridgeway House. He was called up for Military Service in 1917 and served in both France and Italy before returning to continue in practice in Ottery St Mary until 1923 when he sold both his house and practice to Ralph Traill.

Dr Johnson lived in Raleigh House on Mill Street. In 1922 he sold both the house and practice to Dr Frank Sidebotham. Dr Frank Sidebotham and his brother in-law Ralph Traill invited a friend who had also trained with them at Guys hospital in London Dr Esmond "Teddy" Micklem to join them in Ottery St Mary's first group practice.
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1920-1960
Through the friendship the doctors functioned as a group for organisational purposes although each doctor still had his own consulting room and dispensary at his own home. From 1926 until 1935 Dr Frank Sidebotham however conducted a surgery from part of a railway carriage parked in the grounds of the gasworks between the river bridge and the station!

In 1949 Dr Jimmy Sidebotham joined the practice and Dr Neill Micklem followed him in 1954 due to the death of Dr Frank Sidebotham.  This group of General practitioners were pioneering and decided to build a group general practice in a corner of Ralph Traill's garden on what is now 74 Sandhill Street. This groundbreaking surgery included a dental surgery.

1960-1980
The 1960's saw a new generation of partners join the practice: Dr Graham Ward in 1963, Dr Jeremy Bradshaw-Smith in 1964 and Dr John Pegg in 1969. The dental surgeons gave up their part of the premises in 1964 and so the County Council bought them out and extended the premises to accommodate the district nurses and midwife. A waiting room was also added.
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In 1970 the practice continued with its pioneering outlook led by Dr Bradshaw-Smith and developed a computerised system for medical notes in association with the Institute of Biometry and Community Medicine in Exeter. Together with Mount Pleasant Health Centre in Exeter the Ottery St Mary Practice was one of the first UK practices to be fully computerised.

Dr John Ackroyd joined the partnership in 1974 and Dr Tim Cox joined the partnership in 1980.

1980 -present
By 1982 the local population had grown from 6,500 in 1963 to10,000 and with 5 partners the Sandhill Surgery was too small to house the expanding partnership and primary health care team. The decision was made by the partnership to finance and build a new surgery in the present site on Canaan Way. Three extensions have been made to the original building between 1982 and the present day to provide for the expansion in population served by the partnership as well as the expansion to the present nine partners and one retainer now providing medical services to Ottery St Mary and the surrounding villages and hamlets.

Dr Jean Brown was the first woman to join the partnership in 1984 and Dr Chris Dilley became a partner in 1989. Drs Ward, Bradshaw-Smith and Pegg retired over 1994 and 1995 and three new partners joined: Drs Simon Kerr and Katherine Gurney in 1994 and Dr Matthew King in 1995. Due to further population expansion Dr Nigel De Sousa joined as an additional partner in 1997. In 2003 Dr Gurney reduced to half time after the birth of her daughter and so Dr Emma Stuart in joined in 2004 as a half time partner to job share with Dr Gurney. In January 2006 Dr Alex Degan joined as Associate GP.
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Disaster
The flood of 1997 saw the partners (one in a wetsuit) trying to protect the surgery in The Land of Canaan from the rising waters. Following this floodgates were added to the front entrance.

Branch Surgeries
Branch surgeries have been held in surrounding villages to cater for patients unable to get to Ottery St Mary due to transport difficulties. The surgery in Newton Poppleford is run in premises rented from the parish council. The Whimple Surgery was held for 33 years in the house on Mrs Frances Pratt however in 2001 the partnership built a dedicated surgery called the Sandford Surgery. The Feniton Surgery ran for many years but in now discontinued