Written evidence submitted by Mrs Sarah Konig (FGP0223)

General Practice is cracking under the expectation of Patients, Government and the employers themselves.

I see the impact that of lack of support and moral from both sides of the argument. I am married to a GP that works 12-hour days 3 days a week, day of doing research to create practice income and he is still doing paperwork at the weekend.

I am Practice nurse, who feels undervalued by my employers (GP’s), the public lack of perception in our role. This mainly due to government and press, referring to GP’s as being what general practice is about.

Even this inquiry information does not mention us or the other roles that work within a GP surgery.

Access to general practice is largly to lack of Gp’s, poor building infrastructure to accommodate growing services with in a surgery such as ANP, Pharmacists, physios. There needs to be more admin and reception staff. These staff could be used to signpost patients into other directions for help.

More staff means mean more people to support patients in an era where General Practitioners numbers are dwindling and will not be replenished for at least another 5 years.

Patients become very frustrated if they cannot get an appointment at their surgery and largely can’t understand why. I think patient’s need to be encouraged more towards self-care. It maybe also worth while for patients to see what goes on behind the scenes at a GP practice. This would give them a better insight in what we do and to ask questions.

We have a Named GP patient, in our practices, which has its pros and cons. Our GP have a great working knowledge of our patient and also a good repour with their patients as well.

I feel the named patient model can lead to maybe Dr’s not always seeming something wrong or listening to the patient. Also, there is a culture of not being able to change your GP within the practice, which can upset patients and frustrating for us.

Retention of staff in the long term is going to be the most important in role of keeping general practice going. Discussing with staff on the frontline how best services go forward and actually listening to what we have to say. Then discuss how it should be implemented. This should involve frontline staff as well.

I think the partnership model is likely to fizzle out with a lot of new Gp’s wanting to come into it as a salaried doctor. I am aware that these Gp’s do shy aware from undertaking all the Gp’s roles, like referrals to hospital, prescription signing off and duty shifts. I know at my partners practice this can be the case. This puts a huge amount of pressure on the partners to do this work. This is because they are afraid that the salaried Gp’s will leave.

Recruitment of Gp’s is also virtually impossible.  It is in some cases that the only Gp’s available to employ are from countries like Nigeria.

It is the Practice nurses that play a big part in education. Education is integral part of preventative patient management. There needs to be more time to this but alongside of our General Treatment role is difficult, because they are time consuming and unfortunately patients are not always RECEPTIVE TO THIS. More training for nurses on this would help. Also, maybe some more group education for patients with peer support.

General Practise Nurses are undervalued in primary care. They rarely get a mention in terms of Primary care. It is always seen that Primary care is being just Gp’s, but this is incorrect. We are a huge part of the workforce. Our pay is variable from Practice to practice. We would like to be part of Agenda for change so we get a fare pay level. Our conditions are different from practice to practice. Some have sick pay, some don’t. Pay rises are discretionary.

So please consider GPN’s as a huge part of the Primary care team. Without us General practice would not function.

December 2021