Who's Who

Dr Joanna Bircher	Dr Richard Bircher	Dr Tom Jones	Dr Rachel Edwards	Dr Andy Knox

Who is in the team

The permanent team at Lockside Medical Centre consists of five doctors (above), two practice nurses, a health care assistant, our practice manager and assistant practice manager, a computer manager, six receptionists, two secretaries and two cleaners. However, this is just the team who are directly employed at our practice. We have close links with a range of other professionals, district nurses, health visitors, psychiatric nurses, counsellors, podiatrists, nursing home sisters, drugs workers, alcohol advisors and physiotherapists, to name a few.  We believe that the best way to organise care for our patients is to have as many of these professionals working from our practice or in the local area as possible. 

What makes us special

We pride ourself on the feedback our patients give us.  They tell us we're a special practice because we are friendly and approachable.  We know that when you are unwell it can be painful, inconvenient or frightening.  We aim to never be abrupt or dismissive with our patients, and in return we know we have very few problems with people being aggressive or nasty.

Training

We play host to a range of visitors from time to time, who are interested in learning more about primary care.  We have been acreditted by the North Western Deanery of Postgraduate Medical Education as a 'Training Practice'.  This means we are considered as offering a high enough quality of service to train new doctors. 

The doctors who we train, are carefully selected, have had experience working in the hospital and are safe to see patients on their own and prescribe treatments.  If you have ANY feedback on how these doctors are working, good or bad, please let us know.

We also have occasional medical students and nursing students with us.