A country practice or a city surgery?(Brief Article)

THE COUNTRY: Sara Moloney, practice nurse based in Balham Park Surgery, spent three days at Fownhope Medical Centre, a rural Herefordshire practice with 4,300 patients

The first differences were apparent from the moment we drove into the car park - there is no problem parking at Fownhope and the area is surrounded by fields. Once inside the purpose-built medical centre, however, I found that the facilities are similar to those at my own surgery. On my first morning I sat in with Sarah on a mixed clinic, seeing patients with diabetes, hypertension and for cervical smears. The way we work is almost the same, but the patients were very different. Fownhope does not have the ethnic diversity of Balham

- all of the patients I saw were white and had often lived in the area all their lives. The pace was more leisurely than I am used to and many of the patients wanted to have a long talk. At my practice they are often dashing off to work …