Nursing & Healthcare Team

Nursing Team 

Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) & Nurse Practitioner (NP)

Advanced Nurse Practitioners are specialised nurses who have a lot of experience working in primary care (with GPs) and who have undergone higher professional training to become practitioners. In practical terms this means they have had extensive university-led training in a range of subjects including physical examination, managing illnesses and injuries and pharamacology and prescribing.

All our nurse practitioners are nurse prescribers and are very comfortable managing a wide range of acute (i.e. recent onset) problems. They are independent and used to investigating, diagnosing and treating a wide range of common General Practice illnesses and injuries. We use nurse practitioners extensively in our clinics so that our doctors have more time to deal with more complex, chronic (i.e. longstanding) problems.

We use ANPs to increase access & healthcare options to our patients. Our reception team will ask you questions as to what your symptoms are to ensure they put you with the right clinician and often seeing an ANP will be the most appropriate and best option.

• Our ANPs are excellent but they are not trained in some areas that GPs specialise in – such as mental health, chronic or complex pain, complications of pregnancy and long term, incurable conditions.
• Our ANPs all bring their own previous training, expertise and special areas of interest to their work. They also run some follow-up clinics for problems that don’t resolve after the first visit.

Our Team 

Sara Merrett:

• Sara was a mature adult nursing student with a specialist interest in emergency medicine and spent a number of years working in Worthing and Brighton Emergency Department. Sara found a love for Practice Nursing after her 2nd child was born and joined Sackville Medical Centre in 2016 which became Trinity in 2017. Sara is the lead Nurse for Diabetes, Travel and Education and recently completed her Advanced Nurse Practitioner degree at a classification of first class honors, which allows her to see and treat on the day patients.

Nurses

Our practice nurses see patients in surgery by appointment. Many health matters can be dealt with by them. Services they offer include:

• Practical nursing care such as dressings, injections and ear syringing
• Ongoing care and monitoring for patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and raised blood pressure
• Screening tests such as cervical smear tests
• Contraceptive services, including emergency contraception, pill checks
• Sexual health checks

Our wonderful nursing team consists of:

Fiona Sansom 

Sue Henderson

Beverly Bishop

Alex Barker

Assistant Practitioner 

Tessie Simons 

Healthcare Assistant Team

A healthcare assistant (HCA), works under the guidance of a qualified healthcare professional, usually a nurse. Sometimes staff working in HCA roles are known as nursing assistants, nursing auxiliaries or auxiliary nurses.

Our healthcare assistants see patients in surgery by appointment. Services offered include:

• Alcohol screening
• Weight management
• Smoking cessation advice
• Patient health checks and blood pressure readings
• Taking blood samples
• Additionally our HCAs assist the doctors and nurses in some examinations and procedures including applying dressings and giving flu, pneumonia and vitamin injections.

Our lovely HCA team is made up of:

Louise Thompson 

Bev Pond