Patients and doctors 'extremely happy' with move to new four-storey GP surgery in Portsmouth city centre

On Monday, May 23 the eagerly anticipated Uni-City Medical Centre, in Commercial Road, opened its doors to the public for the first time as the new venue for the University Surgery, which closed its St Michael’s Road site the previous Friday.

Complete with three floors of consultation space, the practice – which serves more than 17,000 patients – also has space to train a raft of medical professionals including new GPs, advance nurse practitioners, triage nurses and healthcare support workers.

For GP Doctor Oladapo Alalade, who has worked at the practice for 15 years, it was the start of a ‘bright future’ for the surgery.

‘I’m extremely happy with the new premises,’ he said.

‘It’s much larger which means we have space to train up more medical staff.

‘And the location is so much better for our patients being in the city centre, it’s much easier for them to get to us.’

Currently the practice has four GPs but it is planned they will take on more.

Operations manager Lucinda Potter said the move was a ‘long time coming.’

She said: ‘It’s taken us a while to get here but it’s so worth it.

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‘The patients seem really happy, they were bringing us in gifts and cards yesterday to celebrate.’

Her colleague Steph Murray, the practice manager, added: ‘It’s great that we have all this space.

‘Obviously we’ve always had the relationship with the university which means we have students in for training.

‘But now there’s room for so much more.’

One patient, university student Armanda Bergmane, 19, visited the new site for the first time.

She said: ‘It was a really good service, really quick.

‘This is much easier for me to access as well, rather than having to walk all the way to the old surgery.’

The new surgery opening times are Monday to Friday from 8am to 6pm and Saturdays from 8am to 12pm.