Welcome to our fourth article in this little series, where today Dr Uwa Sanusi takes centre stage. Uwa joined the practice as a Partner in 2018, and quickly forged a niche in Women's Health. She also does medical education supervising GP trainees, and oversees all the practice's complaints, which means she investigates cases and ensures that questions are responded to in a timely manner, improving the care we provide to our patients.
And as if that doesn't keep her busy enough, she works in Out Of Hours at York Hospital, which you'll probably know is the local service for urgent medical problems arising overnight, at weekends, and bank holidays. Usually these are infections that are worsening despite treatment, or flare-ups of known conditions that cannot wait until the next morning. Sometimes she also finds herself issuing prescriptions for patients who have run out of their regular medication, and has the following advice:
"At OSMP we encourage patients to put in their prescription requests at least 1 week prior to running out. This will help improve the turnaround of prescriptions in a timely fashion"
Looping back to our Green Blog theme, Uwa leads a model life at home, recycling, cycling, and eating healthily. You may well have chatted to her about food during your consultation, and even been given some tips on home-made smoothies as a way to have both fluids and the recommended 5 portions of fruit and veg per day. Ask her for her favourite recipe next time you're in! The role of food in health and wellbeing has rightly taken off in the past few years, and symptoms really can be reversed or improved, as well as staving off the onset of some illnesses. In fact there's some interesting research suggesting that 30 plant-based foods per week can boost your gut microbiome and even improve your mental health. Now my plant biology ain't up to much, so I'd suggest you check out this link for more information. And if you want to see the '30 plant challenge' in action, one of our GP colleagues in Oxford has a week of light-hearted posts here on Instagram showing how she managed to do it.
As OSMP's Women's Health lead, Uwa regularly promotes reusable and plastic-free sanitary products in consultations. There are washable pants (literally all styles including boxers, racy, and lacy!), pads, tampons, cups, and even swimwear you can use whilst you're on your period. There are posters with information in the patient toilets in the surgery, or ask your GP if you'd like to find out more; you can buy them in Boots and large supermarkets, as well as York's weigh-and-pay shops (The Bishy Weigh, Tullivers, and The Giftery). And of course we stock plastic-free pads in our treatment room if you need to use one after a procedure; our main supplier Dene Healthcare have a fantastic sustainability ethos, and when we spoke to them about our commitment to healthcare that doesn't harm the planet 2 years ago they immediately started stocking organic plastic-free pads. See, it really is true that the more people ask for greener items, the more outlets and stockists will provide them. Go on, try it yourself next time you're in a shop and your fruit/veg is swathed in unnecessary disposable plastic wrappers!
Watch this space to find out more about Uwa's role in environmentalism, as she's just set herself a target to complete one of the larger tasks on the 'Green Impact for Health Toolkit' this year, to help push us over the line for a gold award in September.
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