Meeting with Furnace Community Council

 

We'd like to thank Furnace Community Council for taking the time to meet with us, chat to us, and show us around the village last week.  Furnace Community Council had already visited our practice in Strachur and had been invited by the Strachur Patient Participation Group to attend their Strachur Community Hub. 

We managed to cover quite a few topics and learned a lot about Furnace village and its health care needs.  One of the things that stands out to us is how vibrant a village life there is in Furnace given the size of the village.  For example, the fish supper nights and the bar in the Village Hall.  We were also impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the Community Council, which I am sure is linked.  The Everything Furnace website is amazing, and the local historian's contributions deserve special mention.  It shows Furnace as a dynamic little community.

The key take home messages from the visit to us were:

• Furnace residents would like to go back to have a regular GP and nurse service in the village, and were open to discussion about what form that could take (in terms of the level of services and how often per week).
• The loss of the GP clinic in Furnace appears to have negatively impacted the village and put downward pressure on other services (eg: the school).
• Furnace has a proud history and remains a dynamic community.
• The Furnace patients value continuity of care and would like to be able to see the same doctor for follow up appointments and have a doctor that knows you treat you.
• Furnace see the value of good management in a practice.
  

We were asked whether patients would need to travel to Strachur for treatment if we were the successful candidate, and we can reassure patients that they will have their own GPs in Furnace and Inveraray, and definitely won't be asked to travel to Strachur.  (Of course, we won't stop patients who want to be seen in Strachur from doing so - for example if they work in Cowal and that would be more convenient for them at times.)

We were asked about our ability to recruit GPs when other local practices struggle, and we discussed the reasons why Strachur is able to recruit GPs and other staff in the current climate.  We've added a page on this website to cover the subject of recruitment in more detail.

Furnace raised that they would like to see the future of the practice secured with good succession planning and planning for sudden illness in key staff.  We thought that was a very good topic to raise, and we've added a page on this website to cover future proofing as well.

I've also added a section from our discussion about recruitment: