Practice Values
It is difficult to give a "flavour" of the practice - how it feels and what distinguishes it. It might seem rather quaint to have a little single-handed practice these days - and indeed it is true that village practices, rather like village pubs, post offices and shops, are an endangered species. Fovant is resisting this trend and is proud to have all of these amenities. We feel that we can offer the range of services that much larger practices do, but with the quality and close personal service that is unique to village communities.
It seems that in the Brave New World of sound bites, political correctness and aspirational platitudes, no one is anyone without a Mission Statement. We are completely against this ghastly trend, but recently we came across this prayer by Sir Robert Hutchison. It was written at least fifty years before anyone had even dreamt of mission statements, but seems to nonetheless capture what we try to live up to in the Fovant practice:
'From the inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than endurance of the same, Good Lord deliver us.'
And we are able to offer services that larger practices often can not do, such as dispensing medications at the time of the consultation, seeing the doctor any day without appointment, a full range of sophisticated minor surgery and direct access to highly skilled nurse-led services.
The high standards that we set ourselves have been recognised by the Wessex Deanery who have declared us to be of a sufficient standard to train young doctors, one of only two single handed practices in Wiltshire to have this status.