Vaccine Booking Now Open

We are now taking bookings for eligible patients.

If you have received a self-booking link, please use it to book onto one of the available dates.

If you do not wish to have your vaccine, kindly let us know.

For 2025, there has been a significant change to eligibility criteria for the Covid vaccine. Building on advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), eligibility has been narrowed significantly compared to previous years – targeting those at highest risk of severe illness.

The below table explains the eligibility changes in more detail. The 2024 criteria, in red, no longer applies.

We understand that these changes may be disappointing for some of our patients. However, Tunstall Primary Care must follow the national criteria set by the JCVI and the NHS. Unfortunately, this means we are not able to vaccinate patients who are not eligible under the new rules.

For more information on the new criteria, please go to https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/covid-19-vaccine/

Protect Yourself Against RSV This Winter

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) can cause serious illness, particularly in older adults and those with underlying health conditions.

We are now offering RSV vaccinations for eligible patients.

If you have received a booking link, please use it to schedule your appointment. If you prefer not to have the vaccine, let us know so we can update our records.

Getting vaccinated helps protect you and those around you.

Book your RSV vaccine today and stay protected this season.

Who Can Get the RSV Vaccine?

The RSV vaccine is being offered on the NHS to:

• Pregnant women – from 28 weeks of pregnancy (or as soon as possible after that). Protection passes to your baby before birth.

• Older adults – People turning 75 years old on or after 1 September 2024

• Those aged 75 to 79 years on 31 August 2024 (catch-up group, eligible until their 80th birthday)

• Anyone who turns 80 after 1 September 2024

If you are in one of these groups, you will be invited to book your RSV vaccine.

Not sure if you’re eligible? Please contact the practice and we’ll be happy to advise

Protect Yourself Against Shingles

Shingles can be a painful condition that sometimes leads to long-term complications. The good news is that there is a vaccine available to help protect you.

The Shingles vaccine is now offered on the NHS to eligible patients, including:

• Adults turning 65 years

• Adults aged 70 to 79 years (catch-up programme)

• Adults with a severely weakened immune system (from age 50 years)

If you are eligible, you will be invited to book your vaccine.

Getting vaccinated helps protect you from shingles and its complications.

Contact the practice if you’d like to check your eligibility or book your appointment.

Patient Awareness of the General Practice Crisis

The crisis in general practice has never been more urgent, and we need your help to ensure patients, policymakers, and the public understand the pressures facing GPs and why action is needed.

We’ve created videos featuring real GPs speaking about the reality of working in general practice to show:

• The vital role GPs play in patients health and the NHS.
• Highlight the growing pressures on GPs, such as increasing patient demand, limited resources, and financial uncertainty.

Your GP practice team is here to help you. Thank you for treating us with respect.

The Practice takes it very seriously if a member of staff is treated in an abusive or violent way.

The Practice supports the government’s ‘Zero Tolerance‘ campaign for Health Service Staff. This states that GPs and their staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused and to work in an environment free from harassment and unlawful discrimination. To successfully provide these services a mutual respect between all the staff and patients has to be in place.

Our Practice staff aim to be polite, helpful, and sensitive to all patients’ individual needs and circumstances. They would respectfully remind patients that very often staff could be confronted with a multitude of varying and sometimes difficult tasks and situations, all at the same time.  Our team understand that ill patients do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint.

However, aggressive behaviour, be it violent, abusive, written or physical, will not be tolerated and may result in you being removed from the Practice list and, in extreme cases, the Police being contacted.

We ask you to treat your GPs and their staff courteously at all times. The types of behaviour that would be found unacceptable:

• Using bad language, derogarative terms or swearing at practice staff either verbally or in writing
• Verbal abuse towards the staff in any form including verbally insulting the staff
• Persistent or unrealistic demands that cause stress to staff will not be accepted. Requests will be met wherever possible and explanations given when they cannot
• Racial abuse and sexual harassment will not be tolerated within this practice
• Any physical violence towards any member of the Primary Health Care Team or other patients, such as pushing or shoving
• Causing damage/stealing from the Practice’s premises, staff or patients
• Obtaining drugs and/or medical services fraudulently

*This list is not exhaustive.

The Legal Position

As a responsible employer, the Practice has a duty as a provider of NHS healthcare to protect the health, safety and welfare of staff under the Health & Safety at Work Act. This includes a risk assessment of violence towards staff and taking steps to mitigate this under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

Each employee has rights under the General Data Protection Regulations and should feel that this place of work is a safe environment. 

Extenuating circumstances

The practice acknowledges that there may be instances where aggression / inappropriate language forms part of a patient’s illness.  In these circumstances, the issue will be discussed with the patient and form part of their care planning. However the patient may still be removed based on the severity of the situation.

Definition of Physical and Verbal Abuse and Violence:

 Physical and verbal abuse includes:

• Unreasonable and / or offensive remarks or behaviour / rude gestures / innuendoes
• Sexual and racial harassment
• Threatening behaviour (with or without a weapon)
• Actual physical assault (whether or not it results in actual injury) includes being pushed or shoved as well as being hit, punched or attacked with a weapon, or being intentionally struck with bodily fluids or excrement.
• Attacks on staff or the public
• Discrimination of any kind
• Damage to an employee’s or employer’s property

 The Practice supports the Zero Tolerance stance adopted by the NHS.

 The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) defines work-related violence as:

“Any incident, in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work”.

Violence and aggression towards a person may also be defined as:

“A physical contact with another person which may or may not result in pain or injury. The contact is uninvited and is an attempt to cause harm, injury or to intimidate. Non-physical aggression includes the use of language which causes offence or threatens the safety of a member of staff”.

Warning Letter

Warning letters may be issued to patients when GP practice partners and / or Management Team believe a patient’s behaviour has been inappropriate and unacceptable.

Removal From The Practice List

The removal of patients from our list is an exceptional and rare event and is a last resort in the event of a breakdown in the patient-practice relationship. We value and respect good patient-practice relationships based on mutual respect and trust. When trust has irretrievably broken down, the practice will consider all factors before removing a patient from their list, and communicate to them that it is in the patient’s best interest that they should find a new practice. An exception to this is in the case of immediate removal on the grounds of violence e.g. when the Police are involved.

Removing other members of the household

The practice may need to consider removing other household members to ensure the safety of our staff. This is likely to happen where other household members may need to attend the practice with the removed individual and / or other household members may require a home visit where the removed individual is resident, which we would be unable to facilitate. The best interest of the remaining household will be taken into consideration when forming a decision.

BMA Guidancehttps://www.bma.org.uk/media/5144/bma-guidance-on-how-to-deal-with-discrimination-from-patients-march-2022.pdf

Weight-management services update – Oviva

SSOT ICB does not commission a tier 3 weight management service from Oviva in Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent.  In line with NICE and NHSE guidance, weight management injections will be made available to eligible patients through a locally commissioned service from the end of June 2025.

Weight-management services update – Mounjaro

We are receiving a significant number of enquiries about the availability of the Mounjaro weight-loss drug which has been approved by NHS England for eligible patients. NHS England has set the criteria for eligibility for the drug; this is a national policy which all NHS prescribers, such as GPs and pharmacists, are required to abide by. The criteria for weight management cannot be changed by prescribers.

Although NHS England has approved the drug, all GPs are waiting for information about how the drug will be provided to eligible patients, when, and for how long. We are also awaiting guidance about how the drug should be used by patients along with other services to support weight management, such as diet and exercise.

Current guidance is that anyone with a BMI of 40 or higher, and with four or more of the qualifying comorbidities (hypertension, dyslipidaemia, obstructive sleep apnoea, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes) will be eligible for assessment to identify their suitability for Mounjaro. Anyone not meeting these criteria will not be eligible for assessment in the first year of the drug being available.

Update: 

23 June 2025: From today (23 June 2025), following approval by NICE, tirzepatide (Mounjaro®) will be available in the NHS for eligible patients who meet the strict, nationally-set, criteria. 

The current criteria is that patients are those with a BMI of 40 or higher, and with four or more of the qualifying comorbidities (hypertension, dyslipidaemia, obstructive sleep apnoea, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes) will be eligible for assessment to identify their suitability for Mounjaro. Anyone not meeting these criteria will not be eligible for assessment in the first year of the drug being available. 

Please do not contact your GP; if you are eligible to be assessed you will be contacted over the coming months and invited to attend an appointment for assessment. Those with the greatest clinical need will be contacted first. 

If you are looking for support to help you manage your weight you can find useful information and resources on the ICS website at Local Weight Management services - Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, ICS.

To try to reduce the burden on the call system which, in turn, makes it easier for patients to get through on the phonelines, we do not accept prescription requests via the telephone. 

You can order repeat prescriptions using one of the following methods:

• Email to tunstall.primarycare@stoke.nhs.uk
• Order via your pharmacy, please speak to your nominated pharmacy for more details on the service they provide
• Paper request placed in the dedicated prescription boxes at both Tunstall and Packmoor surgeries.
• PLEASE DO NOT TAKE REQUESTS TO THE RECEPTION DESKS
• Online Ordering using Patient Access or the NHS App
• The NHS App is available on the App Store and Google Play, please click here for further information