Office of General Practice
Swindon General Practice Education
Swindon General Practice Education
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Practice ProfileGreat Bedwyn is an isolated rural practice in Wiltshire near the Wiltshire / Hampshire / Berkshire border. The practice is in the old converted village school originally built in 1835. Cost rent improvements were carried out and the surgery opened in December 1995. Great Bedwyn is a village with a population of approximately 1400. It is a single handed practice covering an area of 400 square miles, with no traffic lights! The nearest district general hospital is the Princess Margaret in Swindon. This hospital is 45 minutes away by car. The village has a railway station and is a terminus station from London Paddington, 1 hour 45 minutes away. Great Bedwyn is a thriving community with a village school, local stores, bakery and Post office. There are 2 garages, and kitchen workshop and marble importation company. There are 2 pubs and a British Legion as well as a cricket club and bowling club. There is a village hall which forms a focus for village activities and provides a day centre for the elderly on a Thursday. Many of the patients are involved in agriculture or other local industry with a minority commuting to London by train. The practice covers a total of 43 villages and hamlets across three counties. A small number of patients choose to be registered in Bedwyn from the neighbouring towns of Marlborough and Hungerford. The practice is a dispensing practice and was accredited for training in April 1997. Practice population
Practice DemographyThough the practice area is very affluent in parts there are some vulnerable groups within the practice population. I compared the practice population to the district wide information in the 1991 census for Kennet. In the over 60 group living alone there are 17.9% in the practice compared with a Kennet average of 14.7%. Due to the effect of the relatively large number of elderly living alone the Jarman rating for Great Bedwyn is +10.5 (1991). Over a third of the households in the Savernake area have no central heating. (Savernake is the wider area around Great Bedwyn). Historically all of the land around this area has be owned by the large estates and controlled by wealthy families with feudal origins. This is slowly changing as is the ownership of the large estates. While once they were all owned by old families with inherited wealth more are being bought and controlled by wealth created in modern business. This legacy is still with us though with the village and the surrounding area having an extremely high percentage of privately rented or tied accommodation (30.5%). InfrastructureTransport. There is one bus a week to Swindon where the nearest district general hospital is. By car this takes 45 minutes to reach. A bus service has recently started providing buses to Marlborough based on the train timetable. Amazingly this little community is a terminus from Paddington with trains every hour! The journey time to London is one hour forty-five minutes. The village has developed a "Link scheme" to help those with no transport to reach hospital for visiting. There is a core hospital car service but this is only made available for those attending outpatients themselves or being admitted to a ward. It is not available for "minor" casualties or for relatives wishing to visit or accompany a patient on an outpatient appointment. The village has a Post Office, (though as I write this the sub-postmaster has resigned and as yet there are no takers), a small village store and a bakery. The smells of the bakery temptingly waft to the surgery early in the morning. (The bread from the bakery is well worth trying on the practice visit!). There are two pubs, The Cross Keys and The Three Tuns. The Cricket Club is a central focus in the Village, I often take to the field with them. I am also a member of the local village Bowls club. I am Chairman of the Village Day Centre which provides a day of care and interest to the elderly of the village every Thursday. There is a mother and toddler group that meets in the village hall once a week, the playgroup for older children meets four mornings a week. There is no access to state nursery education. There is an excellent primary school in the village. Older children are picked up by buses to take them to senior school in either Marlborough or Hungerford. There is a day centre once a week for the elderly of the village. Meals on wheels only gets out to Bedwyn twice a week. All in all Bedwyn is an idyllic place in which to practice medicine. The Training EthosI am an RCGP examiner and am committed to the values of the Royal College of providing high quality care with compassion. Two main strands emerge from this in the teaching at Great Bedwyn. The first is to grasp the importance of evidence based medicine, and the pros and cons of the use of guidelines in primary care (I am the Clinical Governance lead for our PCG). From this an informed decision of when to implement evidence based health care (and indeed when not to) can be made. The second and most important strand is to learn to develop an intuitive consulting style fitted to an individual practitioners personality. I aspire to make as much of the training in Great Bedwyn learner centred and I try not to make it revolve around a pre-ordained curriculum. I expect any GP registrar who comes to the practice to take (and with help) pass the MRCGP. I have been a GP trainer now for a total of 7 years, both here and in Blackburn in Lancashire. A GP Registrar here you would have your own consulting room. Registrar vacanciesFrom August 2002. Contact detailsOld School Surgery |
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