Primary Care Mental Health Nurse

The Primary Care Mental Health Nurse can offer brief therapeutic help for people experiencing low mood anxiety and stress. People typically are offered up to 8 appointments. If you need a referral on to another specialist service such as psychiatrist or psychologist or your difficulties make it best for you to engage with another team within the community such as The wellbeing Team, the nurse can also help with this.

You can either self refer to the PCMHT nurse by booking an appointment via the reception team or have a referral made by another professional.

You will be offered a ten minute triage appointment at first to get basic information and make sure this is the best service for you. Followup appointments will be for a half hour with the first focused on further assessment of needs.

The calls to you will be made from a Private number and the expectation is that you will be available in a confidential space to accept a call at the agreed time.

Clients should not already be engaged with another part of The Mental Health Team or be receiving counselling/therapy from another agency.

Please note this is not a crisis service and clients who are suicidal should contact their GP in the first instance.

Midlothian Access Point Information Video 

Midlothian Mental Health Practice Nurse service Information Video 

Wellbeing Service

Your GP can refer you to this service.

Wellbeing practitioners support people with long term conditions. They provide time and space to talk about what is important to you and how you can move forward with some of the challenging issues in your life. The key to this is supporting you to identify what matters to you and identifying steps you can take to make those changes, and what support you might need to do this.

General Practice Advanced Physiotherapy Practitioners (GP APPs) or “First Contact Practitioners”

The GP APP works within a GP practice as part of the primary care team assessing and managing people with muscle, bone or joint symptoms. They provide an alternative to a GP appointment and work as “First Contact” clinicians.

GP APPs provide advanced level assessment and management for people with musculoskeletal (MSK) symptoms. They can recognise when a condition is not musculoskeletal and take appropriate action (i.e. referring on to the most appropriate service).

Patients can request an appointment with the GP APP when contacting the practice. GPs and other practice team members can also request an expert MSK opinion from the GP APP.
see link below for more information

GP APP Information Video

GP Advanced Physiotherapy Practitioners – Physiotherapy (nhslothian.scot)

NHS Lothian Quit Your Way East Lothian & Midlothian

Podiatry website Details    

Podiatry – NHS Lothian | Our Services 

Podiatry Community Service Self referral form – Podiatry (nhslothian.scot)

Lets Prevent Diabetes

‘Let’s Prevent Diabetes’ is a 6-hour course that is designed to help you make practical lifestyle changes that will allow you to reduce your risk of going on to develop Type 2 Diabetes.

The course is an interactive group discussion. Our trained educators will help the discussion flow and focus the conversation on all the varying influencing factors that will cause someone to be more at risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. You are encouraged to bring any questions you have about preventing Type 2 diabetes and anything you wish to know about being at risk of, or being diagnosed as having Prediabetes along with you and these will be covered as part of the course.

There are up to 10 people invited along to each session and all have been told that they are at increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

You have the choice of attending the discussion groups at different times of the day, and we shall find one that suits you best.

We offer one-day sessions (remember to bring your lunch!) and we will go through all the content in one day, which may be convenient if it’s difficult to attend multiple appointments. These one-day sessions are held face to face only at a variety of locations across Lothian.

Or it could be that you’d prefer to split the content into smaller bite sized chunks and spread the same content over 3 shorter appointments. These sessions are either online or face to face.

Some of the reasons we deliver this education in this format are:

• By attending the sessions with others, you can share ideas that allow you to manage the changes you’ve made to reduce your risk of type 2 Diabetes and finding out more about pre-diabetes from our educators.
• If you’ve not made any changes yet but are planning to do so it’s a great way of getting hints and tips to help to develop your own plan to reduce the risks involved for you, as the risks can be different for each person attending.
• It gives you an opportunity to meet, share experiences with and chat to others who are in a similar position to you.
• The feedback we get on the sessions are that they are a good way to learn and here are some of the comments we have been given when patients have been asked for feedback:

It can be nerve-racking attending a course on you own so If you would like to bring a carer or friend to support you attend the sessions,  this can be arranged, and they are can be invited along to join in the session too.

If you have any other additional support needs, please let us know and the number of people who are coming to the group when making your appointment and we will be happy to help.

Groups are available within the locations:

East Lothian:

• East Lothian Community Hospital

Midlothian:

• Bonnyrigg Health Centre

West Lothian:

• St Johns Hospital 

City of Edinburgh:

• Sighthill Health Centre
• Allermuir Health Centre
• Pennywell All Care Centre
• Leith Community Treatment Centre

We also run virtual evening groups.

If you have not been referred into the ‘Lets Prevent Diabetes Program’, and you feel like it’s something you’d like to take part in, please complete the self-referral form found by here :   LPD Self Referral opens a new window

Life can be busy, and it could be that you would like some support but are not keen or able to attend the group sessions, if this is the case we can offer you the option of using the web-based platform MyDESMOND. – https://www.mydesmond.com/home/

Please click here to find out more about MyDESMONDopens a new window

Once you have completed the initial Let’s Prevent Diabetes Program we will invite you to log on and use the MyDESMOND Let’s Prevent Platform before inviting you back to complete the ‘Let’s Prevent Diabetes, Refresher  Session’.

These are available to all those patients who have completed the ‘Let’s Prevent Diabetes Program’ at least 12 months after your initial group program was completed.

 The Refresher course:

• Recaps the important key information around the risks linked with being diagnosed with or at risk of developing prediabetes.
• Allow time for you to reflect on your journey since coming to the initial programme over a year ago, looking at what has gone well for you, and what has not.
• Help you to create a new plan to overcome the barriers that have not been able to overcome in the previous 12 months through discussing potential solutions to do so.

Again we deliver these in a group setting so you can learn from each other’s experiences, and this session can throw up new questions that may not have been answered at this stage on your journey.  

We would ask if you can visit your GP practice to have any repeat blood tests and any other measurements taken completed and ahead of coming along to these sessions.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your LPD group experience…opens a new window

Get in touch

You can self-refer to our service by completing our self referral form.

Email: loth.lpd@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk
Phone: 0131 537 9169
Woodlands House
Astley Ainslie Hospital
74 Canaan Lane
Edinburgh
EH9 2TB