Nightingale News - Autumn 2025

The newsletter for all patients and staff at Nightingale Practice

Welcome to our Autumn 2025 newsletter. And it’s a bumper edition! 

We have news of a new app designed to help you if you suffer from joint, bone or muscle conditions and a warning about something called ‘the salt & ice challenge’. Also read what Dr Sarah Williams thinks about the health benefits of taking part in community activities. As always, there’s plenty of news from our Together Better group. This autumn, we celebrate Jeff Coke, probably our longest serving volunteer!

Enjoy the autumn everyone – and happy Halloween!

We asked: Do you and your fellow medical professionals at the Nightingale find it useful to be able to tell your patients about Together Better and all the activities it can offer them?

Dr Williams said: “Yes, absolutely - my fellow medical professionals and I do find Together Better a useful resource for patients. 
“Meeting socially, pursuing interests and trying new things are very good for people's wellbeing and health.”

We asked: If you were speaking to a fellow GP in another part of London who had never heard of Together Better, how would you describe the project to them? Would you encourage them to introduce something similar in their practice?

Dr Williams said: “Yes, I would. I would describe Together Better as a project where a trained facilitator helps our patients and the local community to run classes and other activities that interest them. Some people benefit by volunteering to run classes and other people benefit by attending. 

There is a whole range of things on offer, dependent on the interests of the local community. For example, at the Nightingale, we started with a coffee morning, just for people to meet and chat, and a gentle weekly walk through local green spaces. 

Over the past few years, Together Better has also offered a wide range of other activities – from cooking to shiatsu, from yoga to quilt-making, and from ‘boxercise’ to book clubs. The group also organises interesting speakers, trips to museums in London and, sometimes, to the seaside. 

As I said earlier, having a regular class or classes to do and congenial people to meet can be very beneficial to both mental and physical health. And the fact that many of these activities take place at the surgery is good. It makes it easier for people to attend, as it is somewhere they are used to visiting or already consider a safe space.”

Welcome Dr Shubha to the Nightingale Medical Team

We are delighted to announce we have a new doctor at the Nightingale. Dr Shubhajit Purkayastha (Dr Shubha) joined us in August. We hope to have an interview with him in our Christmas edition.

The latest Friends of the Nightingale Meeting

A Bullet Point Summary

The Friends of the Nightingale met in July. Here are the headlines from that meeting.

• The surgery continues to get generally positive feedback through the Friends and Family Test. 75% of those who have responded in 2025 so far have rated us “Very Good”. But we would like a lot more people to take part in the test, please. There is a QR code in Reception you can use. 
• We are trialling a new off-site ‘virtual receptionist’ service to help answer our ‘phones in a timely manner. This service will help to reduce waiting times and, when you get through, you will be talking to a Nightingale-trained human being, not a chat bot. However, we would ask patients who can use the online form to contact us to continue to do so, as it frees the ‘phones up for those people who are unable to go online.
• Recently, we have seen a drop in the percentage of patients using the online form to contact us – from 80% to 68%. Feedback from the July meeting was that people had “tried the form” but “didn’t like it.” Unfortunately, the form is an NHS form, so the Nightingale have limited to no ability to change it. Training to support people to use the online form was suggested and is under consideration.
• Together Better continues to support people at the surgery – read more about Together Better in this newsletter. Coordinator Tom Fearon gave an update. Tom also told us that hundreds of people had attended James Cook’s funeral and that the Pedro Club that James founded will be carrying on. (As we reported in our summer edition, James Cook MBE sadly died back in June. Wonderful obituaries subsequently appeared in several newspapers, including the Independent and the Hackney Citizen. James was a good friend to Together Better at the Nightingale and is very sadly missed.)

There was a good turn-out for the last Friends meeting – at least 15 patients took part. Thanks to all who took the time. Hybrid meetings (where people can choose to be online or at the surgery) are planned to start soon. You can find out more about Friends of the Nightingale on our website. The next meeting is on 9 October, 4:30pm to 5:30pm. It will be held on-line as a Zoom call.

“I remember from my childhood, being at school. I was one of the ones who helped set up the gym apparatus in the hall. I used to climb on the monkey bars and shin up the ropes. And then I got into football in the playground."

“I’d play football with my friends in the summer holiday. We’d be the first ones at the manager’s door. That’s when I got into table tennis too. We had a coach called Seymour Richards – I remember to this day. He used to make us do 1,000 forehands. I was only nine or ten, but I was lucky. I was coached well."

“Then in secondary school it was football, football, football. And when I left school, I was lucky again. My first job in 1984 was at Brixton Leisure Centre. They had everything there you could possibly want to do, or try, in the way of sport, including a pool."

“One day in Brixton, I saw a guy teaching. I was fascinated, looking through the glass in the door. I said to my manager ‘I can do this’ and so he agreed to send me on a course. And that’s where I learnt the basics of how to run a class. It can be terrifying. You can get stage fright. But I mastered my craft.”

“When I finish a class, it’s like I’m floating. You get high. It’s also the connection with the people in the class. Without them, there would be no ‘me’ is what I say.”

But Jeff admits it hasn’t always been easy for him. “There was a time a few years ago when I just didn’t want to exercise with other people. I didn’t want to be part of a group or any social gathering. It took a while for me to get out of that funk, and it was Adam Cross from Together Better at the Nightingale who got me out of it. He kept sending texts about Together Better, but I didn’t want to know. For five months I told him it wasn’t for me.

“Then I realised the way forward for me was right in front of my nose and so I said to Adam that I would come along and meet people. And then, eventually, I agreed to volunteer, to see if I could help with exercise classes. And it’s gone from strength to strength.”

Three or four years on, Jeff still gets a kick out of helping people at both the Nightingale and Richmond Road practices. He coaches, or has coached, seated-exercise, step classes, circuit training and table tennis.

“When people come in, they can be dragging their feet and a bit slow but at the end of the class you can see how alive they are and that gives me a big lift. It’s probably one of the reasons why I’m still here. I love seeing how people have grown."

“There’s a lady called Carol who has been in my class since 2022. She was unfit at the beginning, stopping to catch her breath. Now I honestly think she would be able to take the class if I wasn’t here. And I am also in much better condition than I was in 2021.”

Thanks to Jeff for sparing time to talk to Nightingale News. And thanks also to Tom Fearon, our current Together Better co-ordinator, who helped facilitate the interview.

Tom says: “Jeff’s a tremendous guy who does so much to help people. I want to put on record how grateful we are. Thank you, Jeff!”

Marking the closure of the Old Nightingale Community Centre

The Together Better group enjoys a good quiz. We have had quite a few over the years. To mark the closure of the old Nightingale Community Centre this summer, we held one last quiz there. All the questions were linked to nightingales in some way. Here are a few of the questions. How is your nightingale knowledge? Select the question to reveal the answer:

Nightingale Practice patients encouraged again to use the NHS App if they possibly can

The Nightingale team has just agreed to focus this autumn on trying to get as many patients as possible to use NHS app to contact the surgery.

As we have said many times before – and it’s worth repeating – we do understand that some patients can’t use online communications.

Perhaps they don’t own a Smartphone or a tablet? Perhaps they are elderly and not happy using modern technology? Or perhaps they have a condition that prevents them from using electronic forms of communication?

To support these patients, we promise that you can keep using the telephone or coming into the surgery to talk to us and make appointments, if you prefer. However, there are many patients who tell us they have tried to use the app but, because they didn’t have a good initial experience, they have given up in frustration. It is these patients we would like to reach with a simple message: please try again.

Using the NHS app to make appointments and/or order prescriptions, for example, will:

• Benefit you, because you will soon find that it’s quicker and easier to get things done (e.g. no more hanging on the telephone or listening to an engaged tone, and your repeat prescriptions reach the chemist sooner)
• Really help the Nightingale staff to manage their huge admin workload
• Support those patients who, genuinely, will never be able to use an app – because the Nightingale will have more time to support them
• Help protect your NHS. By saving the Nightingale staff time, you are helping them save money, so they can put their efforts into treating patients rather than dealing with telephones and admin.

There are instructions on how to set yourself up with the NHS App on our website.

Visit our NHS App page for details

We also have a link to a video with a step-by-step guide to setting up the NHS app.

We hope to recruit a digital volunteer to be at the surgery, in person, to help people set up the NHS app, or show them how to access us via our website. Look out for news. We will let you know days and times the volunteer will be available. Tom Fearon, our Together Better coordinator, can also help.

At the next Friends of the Nightingale meeting on 9 October, our IT Lead, Nasir Ali, will be talking about the NHS app and how to access us online. Please feel free to attend the meeting to hear more, give your views or ask any questions.

Published: Oct 2, 2025