Strathpeffer Medical Practice Forum

Garve and District Community Council

Added at 21:10 on 10 February 2026

News from the quarterly Strathpeffer Medical Practice Community Council Forum which took place on 28th January 2026

Dr. Westwood retires on 31st March 2026 and will be greatly missed by patients.
Dr. Mark Vasko, will be joining the practice, a GP for 11 years with experience of working in England and Scotland.
Currently working in Inverness, prior to that practising in Norfolk for 5 years, and has a special interest in skin conditions and GP training. Dr. Vasko will work 7 sessions per week and Dr. Adamu will drop down to 5 sessions, which means the practice will still operate on the same number of Dr. hours as it does currently.

At our October 2025 meeting we spoke of the value of understanding our individual Community Council area patient demographic. Each Community Council submitted postcodes for their area and Practice Manager Ellie gave us patient numbers registered with Strathpeffer Medical Practice for each of our CCs. This was an exercise we had previously undertaken with the Dingwall Medical Group CC Forum a couple of years ago. There were just 32 people at that time, resident in the GDCC area, registered with DMG. DMG didn’t breakdown those numbers as Ellie has done. These are those for the GDCC area.

Vaccines coming back into general practice this was announced locally by Maree Todd MSP almost a year ago on 30th January 2025. Despite the fanfare of public announcements, a year on and GPs still have no knowledge on when vaccines will be brought back into general practice. It is something patients have been wanting all along. In view of this we will write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care.  Childhood vaccines will be coming back into practise first but the health board still haven’t provided a time scale. The implications of taking vaccines out of general practise and then bringing them back into practices years on will require all staff in all practises undertaking refresher training before they can administer vaccinations. It is likely that travel vaccines will continue to be administered by pharmacies. They are income generators for pharmacies.

Measles has been in the press recently too https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-loses-measles-elimination-status-33305345?
In respect of the ‘loss of the WHO elimination status’ mentioned in the article; if vaccine update is under 95% regardless of infection rates the status it lost. The uptake of vaccines by area is unfortunately not something shared with GPs which seems an opportunity missed. Measles vaccines are currently be offered / administered and 12 months, 18 months and a booster in school. Previously when GPs administered Measles vaccines it was one shot at 13 months with a booster at 3 years. The vaccine was given as a 3 in 1 – Measles, Mumps and Rubella – currently it is 4 in 1 with Chickenpox being added. Fortunately, Strathpeffer Medical Practise has not had anyone present with Measles.

Scabies has also been in the press https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/18/the-sudden-rise-of-scabies
There was an outbreak last year in a local care home – which went on for months and there are still people presenting in practice with the condition. There have been no other increases seen by the practise and there is no cause for alarm in our area.

The negative impacts of large-scale energy projects are often blethered about in our communities, at coffee morning, out walking meeting up with friends etc; - Stress, worry, anxiety, poor sleep, mental health and wellbeing in general - is the practice seeing more people for this reason?
Many people of all ages are presenting at the practice with mental health concerns, anxiety, depression. Energy projects are not mentioned a route cause but along with a whole range of concerns that weigh on people it is a given they play a role. Covid, during the height of the pandemic was something that was attributed to negatively impacting patient mental health. 

Covid 19 and the decreased demographic of those being offered free vaccine - impact on numbers case over the recent Winter months - how dangerous it still?
Over the Winter SMP have not seen many cases of C19, they have though been severely impacted by cases of Flu.  A number of people were hospitalised with pneumonia after having had Flu too. The strain of Flu which was prevalent, especially over the Christmas period was not one which the current Flu vaccine gives protection against. Lots of people have been very unwell with it, some have had secondary post viral chest infections too. It has hit older people and children the most acutely. The practise sends swabs away for viral testing in general. Very few are currently coming back at C19 positive and those that do are not for significant illness. These swabs do pick up on other viruses too. 

Referral to hospital for specialist appointments - are there any which are falling below the government targets for people to be seen? 
This is something which GPs have been calling for - for a long time. Unfortunately, Highland do not publish any waiting times. Having this information would make it much easier for Drs are to manage patient expectation with regard to the weight they are likely to have once the treatment need has been identified. This of course is exactly the type of reassurance patients want to have from their Drs. not having that is obviously an additional worry that patients are being subjected to. Some people are being told at least two years, some are being told that going to a hospital further away may speed things up. Others are being told, 'go back to your GP and ask them to write a letter to speed it up'. In reality though experience has shown doing so has no tangible impact – GPs note that patients willing to accept a last-minute cancellation might in some instances have more luck.  Bed availability also impacts treatment lead times. There continues to be an ongoing issue with patients who could go home are unable to do so due to lack of home car provision and often because the patient has no ‘Power of Attorney’ in place which enables someone to made decisions for them. Having a Power of Attorney in place is something all adults would do well to put in place. Life can change for the worse at anytime and being prepared for such an eventuality should not be under estimated. It can make life changing situations a little more straight forward for loved ones when they will already be dealing with so much. It helps others to help us without any added complications. We will raise this with Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care too. 

Routine screening; such as for breast cancer and colon cancer there are no known delays on being call up for screening or for receiving results.

Practicalities of co ordinating medical appointments with our Connecting Communities bus. {Jamestown, Contin, Tarvie, Garve and District}
SMP offers appointments for upto 7 days ahead. Medical appointments was one of the primary reasons that on demand community transport was said to be needed in our community. It was mentioned that the Connecting Communities project has been awarded some additional funding which will hopefully extend the service which is currently only available Wednesdays to Fridays. It was mentioned that perhaps despite being widely advised in our communities the bus service might not be all that well known about. Often neighbours are still the people offering rides to medical appointments. Acknowledging the ‘use it or lose it ethos’ the practice has kindly offered to put up a publicity leaflet in the waiting area. It was mentioned that there are people who live in Strathpeffer who struggle to get to the surgery in person. An action was taken to get some leaflets to the practice and find out more about the extended service. The insurance requirement for passengers to be registered as a Connecting Communities user before using the service was reiterated.

Diabetes checkups and treatment – several residents have been disappointed with changes to the way Diabetes care is now being facilitated, something their practise dealt with until last year.
The practice has had no update whatsoever from the Health Board and while the practise still do patient annual reviews for Diabetes, all specialist input has been taken out with practise remit.
People locally are experiencing a negative impact from travel to service provided. There are huge numbers of people living with Diabetes too both locally and globally.

Alzheimer’s Scotland – Dementia Friends training we spoke of the benefits of all ages having the opportunity to join an enlightening two-hour informal session;- like the one held in Garve Public Hall on 9th December. It’s estimated that about 90,000 people are living with dementia in Scotland currently, including around 3,000 younger people under the age of 65 and there are over 100 different types of Dementia. 

We also spoke of the value of undertaking CPR training and refresher training – ‘Lucky2BeHere’ ran a training session in Garve Public Hall on 29th September 2025, thanks to funding from LCT
It was an evening well spent.

Participants 

Strathpeffer Medical Practice
Dr. Westwood
Heather, Practitioner Senior Nurse
Margret-Ann, Office Manager
Nicola, Administrator and Finance Officer 

Community Councils
Norma, Contin 
Ron, Strathpeffer
Christine, MSS
Nigel, Dingwall
Sadie, GDCC

A wee post meeting reminder that SMP have two physiotherapists working in practice on Mondays and Thursdays.  
As with all appointments at SMP physiotherapists bookings can be made one week in advance via the Strathpeffer surgery. For Lynn Jarvis on Mondays and Claire Chan on Thursdays.

The next Strathpeffer Medical Practice CC Forum will be held on Wednesday 29th April 2026.
As always if anyone one has any questions they would like asked or points to raise let us know.