Services

Childhood Immunisations

Please book a routine nurse appointment with reception for your child's immunizations. Alternatively you can book an appointment at the nearby Belsize Priory Health Centre:

Belsize Priory Health Centre
208 Belsize Road
London
NW6 4DX

The telephone number for the Belsize Priory Health Visitors is 0203 317 5727.

We strongly encourage all children to be immunized according to the current Department of Health guidelines, which is contained in your child’s Red Book. Please visit the NHS website for more information.

Post Natal Checkups

You can book in your post natal “6 week check” for you and your baby in advance with any of the GPs.

Health Visitors and Baby Weighing

Unfortunately the Health Visitors no longer join us at Abbey Medical Centre for our baby clinic but you can visit them on Monday or Tuesday afternoons (1.30pm to 3.30pm, no appointment necessary) at the Belsize Priory Health Centre.

The Camden Health Visiting Service aims to promote the health and well being of families with children under the age of five. They offer a wide range of advice and support, including:

• Breastfeeding support, infant feeding and weaning
• Parenting advice and support with behaviour management
• Maternal emotional wellbeing and mental health support
• Monitoring and assessing child development and growth, and speech and language development
• Family planning information
• Immunization advice
• Common illness management
• Safety and accident prevention
• Support with disabilities and special needs
• Supporting healthy eating

Limited availability 

You can have your blood test done at the surgery, your blood test form will be saved on our computers. Please book an appointment via reception. 

For Camden residents only

The Abbey Medical Centre has a Care Navigator Ayesha Ikram from Age UK Camden who is now based at the practice. The service aims to improve the co-ordination of care for frail and elderly patient. The service supports access to community and voluntary sector services while also providing any additional information or support you may need that you would not usually receive. The service carries out a home visit assessment with patients rather than at the GP surgery so a patient’s social needs can be fully assessed.

The Care Navigation service is for the following

• Aged 60+ frail or pre frail patients
• Patients with one or more long term conditions
• Patients with an unplanned hospital admission in last 12 months
• Patients at risk of requiring hospital or specialist care
• Patients requiring support to self-manage and remain independent

Some examples of the work the service has been doing

• Accompanying people to community service activities
• Support with form filling
• Applying for grants
• Co-ordinating hospital appointments and booking transport

Your GP can refer you to a Care Navigator. If you think you would benefit from this service or need to know about other services then please ask your GP to refer you or ask reception to take down your name and your usual GP.

All of the GPs at the Abbey Medical Centre are trained in the management of chronic diseases (such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, COPD, ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, liver disease) and if you are a patient with any of these conditions you will be asked to attend for regular check ups.

Dr Sohrabe has specialized training in diabetes and runs a specific chronic disease clinic on Thursday mornings for more complex cases.

Dr Lewis worked as a Specialist Practitioner in Headache and Migraine at The National Migraine Centre from 2008 to 2017 and teaches widely to GPs on the subject of headache.

If you are troubled by frequent headaches or migraines, you can book an appointment in advance with reception. Please specify that you wish to see Dr Lewis regarding headaches – so that reception can book you a double appointment.

Our HCA, Adiba Rahim, offers:

• Wound dressings
• Quit smoking service
• Blood tests
• Blood pressure checks
• Spirometry
• ECG
• Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

Patients living with certain long-term conditions will be encouraged to attend a yearly health check. Long-term conditions are those that impact over a long period of time, such as diabetes and heart diseases.

Patients will receive personalised care and support from healthcare professionals from their general practice. This will cover things that patients say matter most to their health and wellbeing, from the best treatment for their condition, to wider things like employment, housing, and mental health.

Our goal is that by planning care together with care, patients will have the confidence to manage their health, reduce their risk of being admitted to hospital, and have a better quality of life.

Who is this for?

We cover nine long-term conditions:

• Cardiovascular disease (for example, strokes, health failure, ischaemic heart disease, and peripheral artery disease)  
• Diabetes  
• Hypertension (High blood pressure)  
• Hyperlipidaemia (High cholesterol)  
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease  
• Atrial fibrillation  
• Chronic kidney disease  
• Asthma  
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  

In the future, we will look to expand this to cover more long-term conditions.

What can you expect?

If you have one of the long-term conditions listed above, you will be encouraged to have at least three check-ins per year.

Each stage is described below for you:

1. Attend your check and test appointment: In your check and test appointment, a health professional will carry out all the checks and tests you need to monitor and manage your long-term condition. You may be sent for a blood test and have other checks like a blood pressure check and weight check. We may discuss lifestyle factors such as smoking and exercise with you too. If you need an interpreter, please let us know so we can arrange one for your appointment.

2. Receive your test results and your Care Plan: After two to four weeks, you will receive your test results (by post, text, or email, however you prefer). We will also send a blank document called a Care Plan. A Care Plan is an agreement between you and your healthcare professional to help manage your health and support day to day. In your Care Plan, you can record things that are important to your health and wellbeing. This can include anything from your life, like employment, housing, or mental health.

A Care Plan covers:

• What is important to you and the goals you have
• How to get the most out of your medication 
• The care and support you need from others

A healthcare professional will review your Care Plan with you in your discussion appointment. You can start filling out your Care Plan before your appointment or you can fill it during your appointment.

3. Attend your Discussion Appointment: You will then be invited to a discussion appointment with a healthcare professional. This may be another team member (such as a nurse, health care assistant, pharmacist, social prescriber link worker) who is best placed to support your care and can spend more time with you. This appointment will take around 30 minutes. You can discuss your long-term conditions, test results, treatment, and anything else that is affecting your health, from housing to employment. Together we will look at what matters most to you and agree some goals. Your Care Plan will be updated with what has been agreed.

4. Attend your Follow-Up Appointment: Three to six months later, you will be invited to a Follow-Up Appointment. This will last up to 15 minutes and is an opportunity to update your Care Plan with a healthcare professional, considering what is going well and where you may need more support. You may have more than one follow-up appointment in a year.

Please watch this video on your yearly health check

How will I be contacted if this is for me?

We will contact you via text, phone call, or letter to organise your appointments. We will contact patients over the year so please do not worry if you do not hear from us right away. If you are concerned or have questions, please contact us.

We have a counselling psychologist and a psychological therapist, who provide courses of psychological therapy to our patients including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

We also have a psychological wellbeing practitioner, who provides brief psychology interventions such as guided self-help but can also link patients to additional courses or classes for help with anxiety, depression, anger management, insomnia, social isolation and stress.

Stress and worry can leave you isolated, if you want to get out more, share interests or get practical help, she can advise you on what’s available with community links for residents in Camden. 

Our nurse offers:

• Wound dressings
• Contraceptive checks
• Contraceptive depot injections
• Smear tests
• Sexual health screening
• Medication injections (such as Vitamin B12, depot antipsychotic medications etc.)
• Childhood immunizations
• Diabetes reviews
• Asthma reviews
• Blood pressure checks
• Travel advice and vaccinations
• Spirometry
• ECG
• Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

We offer vaccinations for: 

• Shingles
• Influenza
• Pneumococcal
• HPV (those who have missed in school)
• Pertussis for pregnant women
• RSV

Our Healthcare Assistant, Adiba Rahim runs a stop smoking clinic. Dedicated smoking cessation clinics have been shown to work better than when patients try to give up on their own.

A variety of nicotine replacements and prescription medications are available through this clinic to assist you with giving up.

Please book directly into the clinic at reception.