The heart of this country’s National Health Service still beats – even if the pulse can sometimes weaken and appear irregular.
NHS General Practice is still amongst us, and it means a bunch of things in our common life. Its promise will inform all the community health creation to come in our new Centre at Kelso Cochrane House.
GPs are the doctors who don’t discharge you and accept continuous responsibility towards your and your family’s health.
GP Surgeries gather receptionists, link workers, nurses, pharmacists and therapists – as well as doctors – into places of relationship, care and advocacy at the heart of our communities.
Even poor Surgeries concentrate scarcely replaceable community wealth, built up across people’s years.
It is a life-giving thing to be recognised and understood in our mortal dramas. Attendance at home practices over periods of time also develops trust which makes successful treatment more likely. We don’t profit from being processed as objects.
Many of us live already with vulnerability or poverty. All of us will someday find ourselves suddenly more helpless or isolated than we expected.
Mothers with young children. Parents of children of any age. Carers. Young, old, and in-between. Women and men. Those going through difficult life-events. All who suddenly don’t know how to unravel their symptoms.
All these discover the meaning of General Practice.
And some good news!
The sunshine is out (sometimes) and so too, in a few days, will be the Invitation to Tender to fit out the ground floor of Kelso Cochrane House as Golborne and Kensal Town’s new medical and community Centre.
Unless you moonlight rather spectacularly, we doubt many community partners will be bidding for this contract. But we do hope you are limbering up to play your part!
There is much to be preparing with you before we move at the end of this year.
We’re also delighted to report we’ve secured a year of initial resource for partnership coordination and building our business case for a sustained future.
Now we’re heading out locally to gather a more complete understanding of what people want and think their community needs from their new Centre.
Let’s unite to strengthen and bind together the heartbeats of our NHS and our communities.
(Golborne Medical’s ambitions for community building and health creation in Golborne and Kensal Town can be read here. Get in touch via [email protected]. This and previous ‘Golborne Moves’ blogs can be located here.)
