Welcome to Weston PLANET

Weston PLANET is an educational charity in North Somerset for Pier Health General Practice clinicians. PLANET stands for Protected Learning and New Educational Training. It has been running since September 2000, so it’s not so new anymore, but the name has stuck.

Our meetings are at Batch Country House in Lympsham. We meet every month except August and December. Meetings are usually on the third Thursday of the month. A buffet lunch is provided from 1-2pm, followed by the teaching sessions from 2-5pm. Our member practices take turn to host locum cover for the afternoon so that all our members can attend. In this way we provide thirty hours per year of protected Continued Professional Development.

PLANET is funded partly by subscriptions from our member practices and partly by pharmaceutical sponsorship.

We organise regular training in adult and child safeguarding. The rest of our program is guided by annual ballot of our members. Over the years this has resulted in a vast range of interesting talks from “Interpreting the Full Blood Count” to “Paediatric Gait Disorders” to “The Health Impact of Air Pollution”.

Our speakers are invited to give a primary care perspective on their field of expertise, and the sessions tend to be interactive with plenty of opportunities for questions. We invite speakers from Weston General Hospital and other local providers, so that we can get to know our secondary-care colleagues (and put faces to the names on the clinic letters we receive). Meeting up with our colleagues from other practices every month also enhances our feeling of being part of a wider primary-care team, and greatly adds to our resilience and wellbeing.