Enter and view: Clevedon Medical Centre

Healthwatch North Somerset undertook an  Enter and View visit to Clevedon Medical Centre on 11 March 2026, carried out to understand how trauma‑informed the practice is and how it supports patients who have experienced trauma. 

The visit involved observation of the practice, interviews with nine staff members, conversations with three patients, and a wider patient survey which received 1,564 responses (reported separately). 

Clevedon Medical Centre serves around 16,500 patients, with a notably older population, and is a large, well‑established practice with around 85 staff members and strong community links, including work with care homes, social prescribing, and local initiatives. 

Overall, the environment was observed to be clean, calm, and welcoming, with friendly and approachable staff, and good information displayed throughout the practice.

Patient feedback from those spoken to during the visit was positive, although patients did not provide detailed insights about trauma‑informed care specifically. 

Staff and management demonstrated a good understanding of trauma‑informed practice, particularly clinical staff who had attended relevant training, and they described approaches such as continuity of care, flexible appointment processes, and flagging patient needs in records to avoid retraumatisation.

However, trauma‑informed practice was not embedded formally across the organisation, as there was no dedicated policy, training was not mandatory, and reception staff in particular had limited access to training despite being the first point of contact for patients. 

The report also found that while there was no formal support structure for staff exposed to traumatic content, there was a strong informal culture of peer support, including open‑door management and team meetings. 

Healthwatch concluded that the practice already demonstrates a caring, patient‑centred culture with elements of trauma‑informed care, but recommended strengthening this through formalised approaches. 

Key recommendations include providing trauma‑informed training for all staff (especially reception staff), promoting use of NHS toolkits, developing written protocols for handling disclosures of trauma, and improving information for patients about how they can request privacy or support. 

At the time of publication, the provider had not yet submitted a formal response to the findings.