Doctors
Dr Angela Hamill – Senior Partner
Dr Hamill graduated from Dublin in 1986 and has worked for the practice since 1993. She looks after Sir James McKay house and consults all day on Mondays and Tuesdays
Dr Denise Coleiro – GP Partner
Dr Coleiro graduated from Edinburgh in 1993 and has been with the practice since 2003. She is our diabetic specialist and runs regular diabetic clinics. She also supervises our 4th year medical students who are with us throughout the year. She works Tuesday mornings, and all day Thursday and Friday
Dr Caroline Bennett – GP Partner
Dr Bennett graduated from Dundee in 2005 and has been with the practice since 2019. She provides joint injection for knees and shoulders. She also acts as the lead for our attached paramedic. She is in the practice on Thursdays and Fridays. Outside of the practice she also does out of hours work with the NHS Lothian 111 service
Dr Dougal Binnie – GP Partner
Dr Binnie graduated from Newcastle in 2012 and joined the practice in 2020. He looks after Strachan House Nursing Home and works in the practice all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. He has an interest in Men’s Health and Dermatology. Dr Binnie also does out of hours work with NHS Lanarkshire 111 service and also works for NHS Education for Scotland supporting GP training.
Dr Sarah Moran – GP Partner
Dr Moran graduated from Newcastle in 1992 and has been with the practice over 20 years. She is our clinical lead for the practice, representing us at various meetings around the area and running a lot of our projects. She works all day Monday and Wednesday.
Dr Eilidh Stimpson – GP Partner
Dr Stimpson graduated from Edinburgh in 2002 and has been with the practice since 2016. She looks after Eagle Lodge Care Home and also provides contractive implant removal and insertion services for our patients. She works Tuesday and Thursday all day, and a Friday morning.
Dr Jo Stutchfield – GP Partner
Dr Stutchfield graduated from Edinburgh in 2006 and has been the practice since 2019. She supervises our Advance Nurse Practitioner. She works all day Monday,Tuesday and also Wednesday mornings.
Dr Neil Gallacher – GP Partner
Dr Gallacher joined the practice in October 2022, graduating from Warwick in 2012. His clinical interests are infectious diseases, gastroenterology and men’s health. On days when not in the practice he is a GP Teacher on the MBChB programme at Edinburgh University Medical School. His clinical days are Monday and Wednesday all day.
Practice Nursing Team
Our practice nursing team can see our patients for all sorts of conditions – Annual Health Checks, HRT, B12 Injections, Asthma reviews, Bloods and BP checks, Warts and Verruca’s. Appointments are available 5 days a week.
Lead Practice Nurse – Christine Fairfield
Christine has been with the practice since 2000 so is one of our longest standing employees. She looks after our Asthmatic patients as well as all other practice nursing duties and leads the nursing team. She is in the practice on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays
Practice Nurse – Karen Patterson
Karen has been with the practice since 2004 and has worked various days over that time. She carries out all standard practice nurse duties and currently works on Tuesdays each week.
Senior Practice Nurse – Dawn Watson
Dawn first started at the practice doing locum shifts in 2005 and was taken on permanently in 2007. She is an HRT specialist and like Christine, carries out all other nursing duties besides. She works Monday to Thursday each week, and provides early morning appointments for working patients, from 7:30am each day.
Phlebotomist – Natasha
Natasha has been with us since 2019 and does all things blood and blood pressure. You can book an appointment or a house visit with her if required, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Administrators
Practice Manager – Neil Porter
Neil joined the practice in July 2022, coming with 14 years experience in Community Pharmacy. He is responsible for the day-to-day activities in the practice and managing the business side of running a GP surgery. He is a qualified pharmacy technician and sometimes assists the practice pharmacy team with their medicine optimisation work. He works Monday to Friday and always welcomes any comments and constructive or positive feedback from patients.
Assistant Practice Manager – Mary Cox
Mary has been with the practice since 2002. She started out as a receptionist and then secretary to the GPs before adopting the newly created role of assistant practice manager as the practice started to become much busier in 2015. She provides cover for the manager in their absence and supervises the rest of the administration team. She is often to be found on the front desk, greeting our patients as they arrive which has always been her passion.
Medical Administrators – Gillian, Susan, Jayne, Elaine and Alison
“The Girls” as they are affectionately known keep the place running! The GPs and management team would be lost without them and we are very lucky to have them. Each of them will answer phone calls, file documents, contact patients with results, register new patients and help deal the the demands for our service, as well as all the jobs they get given from the rest of us!
Typist/Doctor’s Secretary – Sarah
Sarah has been with the practice since 2014 and works Monday to Friday mornings. She provides a typing service for the GPs referral letters and letters to patients as required. She also carries out any office or secretarial work when needed.
Clinical Coder – Evija
Evija joined the practice in February 2022 as the demand for a specialised coder increased. She previously worked as a medical administrator in another practice and brings all her experience to this new role. Almost every document – from patient letters, discharge summaries, clinical notes, treatment requests etc., goes through Evija to filter to the appropriate clinician for action and to update your notes. It’s a big job, but someone has to do it! She works full time, Monday to Friday.
Advanced Nurse Practitioner
The ANP role was developed partly to address demand and workforce issues. In General Practice it is generally understood to mean a nurse who has undertaken extra training in clinical assessment, including history-taking and physical examination, so they can safely manage patients presenting with undifferentiated and undiagnosed conditions.
ANPs can:
- prescribe any medicine for any condition within their competence (including controlled medicines)
- see patients with undiagnosed, undifferentiated medical conditions and make treatment decisions, including ordering necessary investigations
- refer patients to secondary care.
- undertake appropriate home visits
Kerry McKernan – Kerry has been with us in the ANP role since 2020 after completing her Masters degree at Queen Margaret University. She was previously a district nurse based at the practice since 2011, completing her nursing course at Napier University. She works in the practice Monday to Thursday and will often carry out house visits in conjunction with the duty doctor as well as seeing patients in the practice.
Advanced Paramedic
Similarly to the ANP role, the Advanced paramedic role was created recently to alleviate workload pressures on GPs. Our paramedic, Claire Smith, works with us on a Friday and does much of the same role as our ANP. Claire will see patients for acute conditions on the day, morning and afternoon, and also carries out most of the house visits. The rest of her time is spent working with the Scottish Ambulance Service as a first responder.
Pharmacy
Health board pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are becoming more involved in the care of patients in General Practice. Having the pharmacy team working in our surgery provides valuable medicines support, a close link with our community pharmacy teams and allows our GPs to focus their skills and time where they are most needed for patients who have more complex needs. Pharmacists are experts in medicines and can talk to you about how to get the best from your medicines.
What does the pharmacy team do?
•Provide expertise on day-to-day medicines
•Give advice for patients taking multiple medications
•Carry out medication reviews and other medicines-related support, including discussing side effects
•Give help for patients with their medicines following a stay in hospital, particularly if there has been a change in regimen
•Answer medications and prescription-related questions
•Produce prescriptions
•Support managing patients’ long-term conditions, such as high blood pressure
When you may get an appointment with one of the pharmacy team?
Our pharmacists can provide telephone and face-to-face appointments. The pharmacists, pharmacy technicians or the doctors often review some or all of your medicines and may want to talk with you about the medicines you are currently taking. In the practice we like to review your medicine at least once a year, or more often if needed.
Lead Clinical Pharmacist- Anne Kinnear (Tuesday)
Clinical Pharmacist – Christopher Jordan (Tuesday, Wednesday)
Clinical Pharmacist – Laura Samson (Wednesday)
Pharmacy Technician – Peggy Sorin (Monday, Thursday)
Pre-registration Pharmacy Technician – Devi (Monday,Thursday)
Health Visitors
Health visitors are qualified nurses (or midwives) who have completed specialist training in children and family health.
They provide evidence-based prevention, early identification and intervention throughout the early years of life.
Health Visitors have a significant public health role to play in relation to individuals, families and communities by providing critical support to all children under five years of age .
Health Visiting remains a specialist role that is focused on monitoring and assessing the development, health and wellbeing of all infants and young children, detecting early any issues which require further action; act as the named professional and first point of contact for all health and wellbeing and child protection issues for children under five.
For more information on Health Visiting Services please visit NHS Lothian – Health Visiting web pages.
Your child will be appointed a named Health Visiting or Health Visiting Team between 32 and 34 weeks of your pregnancy. Health Visiting Teams are attached to your local GP Practice.
If you have any questions or concerns prior to being appointed to a Health Visitor speak to your GP or Midwife.
You can contact the Health Visitor team at the practice on 0131 603 0240 and leave a message. They usually get back to you the same day if during office hours.
Health Visitor – Sara Barclay
Health Visitor – Margaret Hancock
Health Visitor – Vicki Adams
Health Visitor – Melissa
Health Visitor Assistant – Susan
District Nurses and Midwife
District Nurses are senior nurses in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service who manage care within the community.
They lead teams of community nurses and support workers, as well as visiting house-bound patients to provide advice and care such as palliative care, wound management, catheter and continence care and medication support.
District nurses are able to prescribe medication to patients in a similar way to General Practitioner doctors, as Community Practitioner Nurse Prescribers under the Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary for Community Practitioners, depending on individual qualifications.
They are mainly based in Murrayfield Medical Centre, but do have a presence here at the practice on a daily basis. They can be contacted on 0131 313 5085 where you can leave a message. They will get back to you during office hours. For urgent out of hours district nurse assistant (after 4:30pm), contact 0131 537 3706.
District Nurses – Adele, Claire
The midwife’s role is to provide skilled, knowledgeable, respectful, and compassionate care for all women, newborn infants and their families. They work across the continuum from pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, labour and birth, postpartum, and the early weeks of newborn infants’ life.
Midwife – Tamlyn Gray is in the practice on a Wednesday and the community midwife team will arrange all your appointments directly. If you need to contact the team you can do so 0131 286 5023.