For researchers and policy-makers, nurses working in primary care are notoriously hard to reach; they are without a management structure with a chief nurse or director of nursing at the top of the organisation, as is the case for their
colleagues working in a community or hospital-based provider.
So, when more than 3,400 general practice nurses (GPNs) recently completed a major Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) survey, it sent a clear message that the nurses had a story to tell.
When I first started in general practice in 1990 I worked with a general practice nurse (GPN), a health visiting team, a district nursing team, a community psychiatric nurse (CPN), a social worker and a benefits advisor, and we were accountable for the 24/7 expert generalist cover for our registered list of 8,500 people.
I entered general practice after a decade of training and experience as a general and vascular surgeon and it took me some while to adjust to the shock of realising that my mindset, attitudes and beliefs, drummed into me through medical school and beyond, had to be reframed: I had to become an expert generalist.
There has been much discussion about Jeremy Hunt’s suggestion that hospital consultants need to adhere to seven day working. This mirrors the Prime Minister’s proposal for seven-day working for general practice offering extended opening hours across the country — an initiative for hard-working people to be able to see their GP seven days a week.
Diabetes education is key to avoid diabetes-related complications.
Katherine Calder gives her views on how general practice nurses can help patients to better manage their diabetes.
How many people with diabetes do you see in your practice every week? With 3.9 million people now living with diabetes in the UK (Health and Social Care Information Centre [HSCIC], 2014), and this number rising all the time, it’s likely that more and more of your patients have diabetes.
New framework opens the way for GPN education and career pathways.
For many years, access to education and career development for general practice nurses (GPNs) has been variable and ad hoc depending on where individuals worked in the country and the general practice settings in which they worked. In my own experience as a GPN, even though I had access to clinical education, to be able to act out leadership with new-found knowledge and skills and to make changes for patients in my care, meant leaving general practice and looking to primary care in the mainstream NHS to fulfil these career aspirations.
Last year 80,000 people died prematurely because they smoked. Today it will kill 200 people (Health and Social Care Information Centre [HSCIC], 2015). Despite progress in driving down smoking rates, it is still the leading cause of preventable death. For every person who dies from smoking, 20 more are living with life-limiting illnesses (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Recent Action on Smoking and Health (ASH, 2014) research estimates that smokers need the care of friends, relatives or social services on average nine years earlier than a non-smoker.
A childhood immunisation programme like no other seen before.
Pauline MacDonald gives her views on the groundbreaking national programme to vaccinate more children against flu.
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