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Episode Three:

Ben talks to Katie Slack, Practice Manager at Blue Dykes and Grassmoor Surgeries in Chesterfield about losing ten GPs over two year and how this crisis prompted them to employ other professionals and ultimately improve patient access, satisfaction and staff morale.

Show Notes

Katie describes the practice and how the recruitment crisis began (1min 16secs)

Initial efforts to cope with the crisis (2mins 23 secs)

Katie describes the local population (2mins 50secs)

Morale and reputation drop and retention suffers (3mins 21secs)

Access was “very poor” (4mins 09secs)

The decision to look at other professions – an Advance Nurse Practitioner (4mins 42secs)

Creating a role for the ANP (5mins 34secs)

Developing the ANPs (6mins 15secs)

Easily integrating ANPs into the Practice (6mins 50secs)

How many patients can the ANPs see? (7mins 30secs)

The ANPs don’t just do face-to-face appointments (8mins 22secs)

70% of home-visits are done by the ANPs (8mins 43secs)

Patients react well to the change (9mins 22secs)

How patient access has improved (9mins 50secs)

The ease of recruiting ANPs (11mins 08secs)

This is working, so let’s look at others professions (11mins 36secs)

Adapting the admin process to manage the new model (12mins 43secs)

The decision to employ a CPN (14mins 03secs)

The CQC are really impressed with the new model (14mins 50secs)

The partners “open up” via the new model (15mins 32secs)

The future for joint working with other practices (16mins 23secs)

Advice to other practices with recruitment problems (16mins 55secs)