Manager Practice


Opposite page and left: Danestone practice manager Tracey Thom with Ashton McCombie. Below: Tracey with practice partners Dr Damian McGrory and Dr Kevin Cormack


as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and is linked to a range of damaging conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, heart attack and stroke.


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SLOWER THE BETTER Tracey Thom recalls the impact of first taking up parkrun, not just personally but on others around her – patients and colleagues at work. “I didn’t really speak about it to begin with, but then people began to ask: ‘What are you up to Tracey because it’s quite noticeable that you’re losing weight’. In a year and a half I was able to lose over eight stone – which was life-changing to be honest. I started telling my story, sharing my enthusiasm for parkrun with friends and colleagues and really anyone who would listen.”


” In the meantime she had taken up the job as practice manager at


Danestone upon the early retirement of a devoted colleague. The practice has a list of around 5,000 patients in a suburb of Aberdeen – with five GP partners, mostly part-time. An email arrived one day from the RCGP announcing the launch of the parkrun practice initiative. Says Tracey: “I replied to it right away and we applied to be a parkrun


practice. A number of the partners were already runners. So they were happy for me to drive this forward. “I was so proud. It’s a little thing but we were first in Grampian,


third in Scotland, and twenty-fifth in the UK to sign up to be a parkrun practice and now there are over 700 in the UK. It really has taken off.” The RCGP provided a “toolkit” including details on how to become a parkrun practice and ideas to promote the initiative to patients, including posters and flyers, display information on waiting room video screens and online via practice websites and on social media, with links to “inspirational stories” on the parkrun YouTube channel.


WWW.MDDUS.COM


CONSTANT THING I DO EVERY SATURDAY – AND THE FRIENDSHIPS I HAVE DEVELOPED OVER THE YEARS HAVE JUST BEEN AMAZING


IT’S BEEN THE ONE


Tracey contacted the run director at


Aberdeen parkrun to discuss the logistics. “It was as much to alleviate any fears over what kind of patients were going to be referred. Is it going to be patients with triple heart bypasses or at risk of stroke? We reassured him that the people we would be signposting to parkrun would be medically classed as fit to do so – patients who could benefit by increasing their physical activity.


“I think one of the selling points is that it’s free. We are not suggesting that patients sign up for expensive gym membership. And also it’s a group activity. You’ve got other people there you can chat to and develop friendships with if you want to.” The initiative is still very much a work in progress and Danestone


and other parkrun practices, along with the RCGP, will be monitoring its effectiveness in improving health over the coming years. Parkrun ambassador for health and wellbeing, Dr Simon Tobin, recently noted that the average finish times for different parkrun locations are getting slower and he sees this as a positive thing. It means that parkrun is bringing in new participants that are less active and less fit, which is exactly what it is aiming to do. Certainly Tracey Thom is in no doubt of the personal impact of


parkrun. “I think it has improved my confidence; certainly it’s improved my


health. It’s made a huge difference to my life.” Jim Killgore is associate editor of Practice Manager magazine


l Find out more and get your RCGP parkrun practice toolkit at tinyurl. com/y5nt4e24


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