Practice News

Why is your GP Practice under pressure?

Please see the attached information leaflets which explain why your practice is under pressure:

5 reasons why? and Why is your practice under pressure?

GP Partner Message to Patients

We are delighted to announce that Dr Carmen Leung, Dr Umarah Ali and Dr James Morton, have all recently become full partners at the practice. Many patients will already have met them and we are sure you will enjoy getting to know them.

 However, it is still a challenging time at the practice, with absence due to maternity leave and sickness. We have welcome support from several excellent GP locums. Pressures on the NHS generally remain enormous, with long secondary care waiting lists and long waits at A&E. Promised support for GP practices with new team members such as physiotherapists and link workers has failed to materialise locally. Please recognise that when you are directed to other services, such as Pharmacy First, this is in accordance with Government advice to use other skilled professionals to help with the current crisis in primary care. The pages on this website and NHS Inform give further information.  Distorted reporting in some parts of the media remains an issue and we are grateful to the vast majority of our patients for continuing to bear with us. Appointment availability has improved over the summer and we are pleased to have been able to significantly increase the number of prebookable face to face appointments. 

 Unfortunately though, we still have an unacceptable level of abuse directed towards our staff. It remains our professional responsibility to prioritise safe care of all our patients within available resources. We understand that it can be frustrating for patients when they are unable to get what they want, when they want it, or when any of us at the practice gets something wrong. But treating our administrative staff and practice manager disrespectfully, shouting at them and even on occasion threatening physical violence helps no one. It also jeopardises the service we provide to other patients, as staff morale is eroded and it becomes more and more difficult to recruit. We are fortunate to have a very experienced, skilled and dedicated manager, but too much of her time is currently being taken up with supporting staff around verbal abuse and responding to what most of our patients would see as trivial complaints, instead of developing the service. This is not the ‘new normal’ any of us wants to see post-pandemic.  We would respectfully remind patients that they are free to move to a different practice if they are dissatisfied with the service we offer. The practice also has the right to remove patients from the list if they are threatening or abusive to our staff.  Of course we continue to welcome all suggestions and constructive feedback and we would like to thank the many patients who have expressed their support as we endeavour to provide the best possible service in the circumstances.

2026 Public Holidays

Thursday 1st January 2026 & Friday 2nd January 2026

Friday 3rd April 2026 & Monday 6th April 2026

Monday 4th May 2026 & Monday 25th May 2026

Monday 20th July 2026

Monday 28th September 2026

Friday 25th December 2026 & Monday 28th December 2026

Practice Newsletter

The GP Partners are pleased to announce the return of our practice newsletter, written by Dr Umarah Ali.  Please select the link below to view:

Winter 2024 Newsletter: - ENGLISH VERSION

Winter 2024 Newsletter - URDU VERSION

Autumn 2024 Newsletter - ENGLISH VERSION

Autumn 2024 Newsletter - URDU VERSION

Spring 2025 Newsletter - ENGLISH VERSION

Summer 2025 Newsletter - ENGLISH VERSION

Winter 2025 Newsletter - ENGLISH VERSION

Practice Changes

Date posted: July 2025

 New Staff

There have been a few changes to our staff over the last 12 months as below:

GP - Dr Roy has returned from a period of maternity leave

Administration - We have 3 new administration team members join the practice in the last 12 months.  

Nursing -  Following retirement of Alison Clark and Morag Smith, we have a new Practice Nurse Kathleen.

Appointment Booking

The practice is currently struggling with the demand for appointments with the GP of your choice given sickness absence and a huge increase in demand for both urgent and routine care.  We do believe that continuity is important but unfortunately it may not always be possible to consult with your usual GP.  We kindly ask that patients do not express their frustration with our Reception Team as they have no control over our GP rota or appointment capacity.  We are doing our very best to provide safe, urgent care for patients who are most in need which unfortunately means that we have less routine availability.  Verbal abuse towards our staff has unfortunately become a worrying issue which results in staff shortages, which in turn causes further delays in practice.  We regularly conduct audits of our telephone system and I have provided figures below of calls which are being received in practice on a monthly basis since December 2023 (this does not include prescription line requests).  These figures are purely answered calls:

• December 2023 - Nithsdale Road:11128  &  Merryvale Surgery: 5239
• January 2024 - Nithsdale Road:12540  &  Merryvale Surgery: 6424
• February 2024 - Nithsdale Road:11242  &  Merryvale Surgery: 6581
• March 2024 - Nithsdale Road:9853  &  Merryvale Surgery: 6138
• April 2024 - Nithsdale Road: 9459  &  Merryvale Surgery: 7091

Misinformation - Message to our patients

Date posted: 13/05/2022

Patients may be aware that there has been some recent misinformation about General Practice in some parts of the media and on social media. We would like to reassure our patients that we have been open throughout the pandemic.  Although recent government guidance has removed the use of mandatory face masks in public places, face masks are still a requirement in a health care setting.  The practice ask that all patients continue to wear a face mask when entering the practice as we are now actively seeing patients who are suffering from covid.  We are working to strict infection control guidelines when seeing our patients who have active symptoms but we must keep all patients safe from any risk of exposure.

We are doing our best to increase the number of "in practice" consultations.  You will initially be booked for a telephone consultation by a GP/Registrar or ANP.  Please be assured that if we require to review you following your telephone consultation, an appointment will be arranged later that day or at another time which is more suitable.  This service will continue for the foreseeable future. 

We understand that the past few years have been difficult and exhausting for everyone and are conscious that this has led to an increase in the number of patients becoming distressed and anxious. All our staff have been working extremely hard to provide the best service they can in challenging circumstances and we are very grateful for the patience and appreciation shown by most of our patients. As always, however, we will support staff on the occasions they are faced with rudeness, and abuse will not be tolerated.