A medical group in Hailsham has been given a Wealden Hero Award as recognition for the work of staff and volunteers.
The workers at Hailsham Medical Group, a GP surgery with sites in Vicarage Lane and Vicarage Field, have been applauded for their ‘selfless dedication’ and hard work to help the community during the pandemic.
The award followed nominations from a significant number of grateful patients who wrote in to Wealden MP Nus Ghani, who gave the accolade, to express their appreciation for the GP practice’s efforts with the vaccination programme.
Almost 8,000 AstraZeneca injections have been given out by the group so far and a spokesperson said this took place almost exclusively outside the staff’s normal working hours, ensuring that urgent and essential routine medical services could continue.
Like GP practices across the country, Hailsham Medical Group had to adapt rapidly to the constantly changing situation at the start of the pandemic, keeping on top of countless official bulletins from the NHS leaders and installing new technology and a new cloud-based telephone system.
A spokesperson from the group said, “Workload in General Practices had been climbing year on year even before the pandemic for many reasons including patients consulting more frequently, more and more work transferred from hospitals, the ageing population, increased levels of obesity and its associated conditions and increased levels of stress and mental health problems generally.
“This has understandably skyrocketed in the last year or so.”
Hailsham Medical Group also became a fully-fledged training practice during the pandemic with Dr Chan passing her ‘PGCert’ teaching qualification with merit.
The practice can now train fully qualified doctors in the art and science of General Practice.
The spokesperson said, “Receiving the award this month has been a wonderful morale booster for the practice after a difficult year and the staff are very grateful to all the kind patients who took the trouble to nominate them.”
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