Brighton surgery staff celebrate fifth anniversary with fancy dress charity fundraiser

Staff at a Brighton surgery celebrated its fifth anniversary by raising money for charity in fancy dress.

The outfits worn by Care UK staff at the Brighton Station Walk-in Centre included a cowboy, Mexican bandit, Heidi, a cat, Minnie Mouse and a fireman.

Care UK regional manager Jon Catterwell led the way in a Darth Vader outfit and was joined by several colleagues.

Mr Catterwell said: “We’re celebrating five years of Care UK running the GP practice and walk-in centre.

He said that the admin and reception staff had an impressive range of costumes although the doctors and nurses who were seeing patients had not joined in.

Care UK staff celebrate fifth anniversary of Brighton Station Walk-in Centre.-Fromleft-Jon-Catterwell-Carolyn Powell Grace Croucher, Hannah Cluny, Charlotte Tilley Tamuka Gonah and Sam Dodge.jpg

He said: “We can’t have lots of clinicians bouncing around in funny costumes not least because they sometimes have to deliver bad news.”

The dressing up day at the walk-in centre in Queen’s Road, Brighton, was part of a wider effort to raise money for the Martlets Hospice in Hove.

Other fundraising efforts at the walk-in centre included handing over the proceeds of the tea and coffee machine for a month and selling tea and cakes.

People are also being invited to guess the number of condoms in a bucket as part of the fundraiser. The surgery – just yards from Brighton Station – also operates a specialist sexual health clinic.

Mr Catterwell said that despite the fun, their efforts had a serious side too.

Care UK recently won a two-year extension to its original five-year contract to run the walk-in centre.

And it is one of more than a dozen practices locally taking part in the EPIC (Extended Primary Integrated Care) challenge.

The EPIC challenge is a £50 million national scheme to extend access to primary care such as family doctors and to reduce the number of people going to hospital emergency departments.

It involves practices collaborating with other surgeries to make it easier for patients to book same-day appointments and for surgeries to open for more hours than they have been.

Doctors’ surgeries in Brighton and Hove were awarded £1.8 million in April for their part in the programme.