Professor Sandy McColl has announced his retirement

Associate Professor Alexander (Sandy) McColl has announced his retirement from clinical practice. As patients will know, Sandy has been away since early January and has recently made the decision to retire, effectively immediately.

It's been an absolute pleasure and honour to have Professor McColl practicing at Westside Medical over the past 14 years. He had made an enormous contribution to medicine in Port Macquarie over many years, both to his patients, and to medical education at the local UNSW Rural Clinical School of Medicine. We're going to miss having him at Westside as much as his patients will!

We are confident that patients who have previous seen Professor McColl will be able to find a new permanent GP at Westside Medical. 

Most other GPs who practice from Westside Medical have capacity to take on any of Sandy's patients who are looking for a new permanent doctor, even if their books are closed to new patients. This includes:-

• Dr David Chessor
• Dr Suzanne Lyon
• Dr Carolina Mazur
• Dr Ryan Barnett
• Dr Geoff Arthurson
• Dr Kate Moriarty
• Dr Sharon Sykes
• Dr Elizabeth Ryrie
• Dr Valia Francis

We have a new full-time doctor planning to start practicing at Westside Medical from the start of May, with an interest in the care of patients over the age of 65. More details to come soon!

If you are a former patient of Dr McColl and have been seeing Associate Professor Debbie Kors, Dr Mark Stewart, or Dr Meredith Wyatt, they may also be able to take on your ongoing care. 

Our two GP registrars, Dr Sam Wang and Dr Karina Schotte, also have good availability for appointments if patients of Prof McColl need an appointment quite soon.

-The WMC team 

Patient experience survey – outcomes

Overall, we are pleased to find that our patients are very satisfied with our service.

The most common area our patients wish could improve is waiting times. This is a real challenge because it is often difficult for patients (and also doctors) to know exactly how much time will be required for any one consultation.

We are, however, committed to try and improve the patient experience with waiting times, and particularly our communication to patients when doctors are running late.

A couple of initial tips from us 👍

1. A standard appointment is 15 minutes and typically only one or two issues can be adequately addressed in this time. If you have multiple things to discuss, it would be best to book a long appointment.
2. Consider using the HotDoc app to check in when you arrive. The app can show you your place in the queue and give you a better idea of how long the wait might be.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey. 🙏

– Westside Medical Centre team.

Patient experience survey.

Happy 2024 to all our patients. 🎉

Here is a summary of our recent patient feedback survey. Thank you to everyone who has participated in this survey.
Overall, we are so pleased to find that most of our patients are very happy.

• 90% are satisfied with their doctor.
• 80% are satisfied with our staff.
• 90% of our patients are happy with the waiting time after arriving at the clinic.
• 95% are happy with operational hours and
• 81% are happy with the check-in and -out process.
• 10% feel our parking arrangement needs some work.
• 88% are happy with the appointment process.

Thank you again for your participation, your input means the world to us.

A future post will focus on some of the actions we’re planning to implement as a result of your responses. 

Myth busters #3

Why am I always asked for my date of birth and address!?

We understand that this can be frustrating, but it’s an important regulatory requirement for any accredited medical centre. 

By ALWAYS checking three points of ID at the front desk, we ensure that the clinical staff access the correct patient file, and we can’t make any mistakes with prescriptions, immunisations, tests being conducted, or results being given to the wrong patient.

Remember though, if you prefer, you can give us your driver’s licence for ID if you’d like to avoid hollering your home address across the waiting room!

Myth busters #2

"Just as I get to know a doctor, they leave!"

Well, this one is somewhat true, but out of our hands 😟 Doctors who are completing their registrar training have to train in at least two different practices, and therefore spend 12 (or sometimes 6) month terms with us before they are required to move to a different training practice. 

We can have up to 3 GP registrars working at WMC at any one time. These are fully qualified doctors with at least 3 years' experience who are completing their specialty training in general practice. Our most recent registrars have been Dr. Pri Sudarshan and Dr. Muj Morshed. 

However, our senior GPs change very little, 11 GPs who have been with us 5 years or more and are unlikely to leave anytime soon.

Myth busters #1

One of the things that we noticed doing our recent survey is that there are a lot of misconceptions around regarding WMC and the services we provide. So, we thought we’d start a new series of regular updates called ‘Myth busters'. Hopefully these can be informative and help patients make the most of our services.

Myth busters #1 – "I can’t get an appointment on the day when my child is unwell."

No matter how busy we are, if your child is unwell and you feel they need to be seen that day, we will fit them in!

If reception advise there are no appointments left, let us know that you are concerned, and we can arrange a nurse triage before one of our GPs sees them also.

There’s even a reasonable chance of a sticker, stamp, balloon or maybe even a hand-knitted toy.

We can now accept requests for repeat prescriptions and referrals online.

We are very pleased to announce that patients can now submit a request for a repeat prescription or a renewed referral online.

Start the process via our 'online services' section.

Find us on Facebook.

Make sure you go and check out our new Westside Medical Centre Facebook page.

We hope that this page will provide our patients to keep in touch with the practice in a convenient way. We'll use Facebook in addition to the website - to post updates about interesting or important health information, or practical things like our opening hours over holiday periods.

You can book your appointment online right from our Facebook page too - click on 'Book Online' just under the cover photo of our reception area, or via the app on the left. New patients are always welcome!