Earlier this year myself and a group of colleagues decided that we should put in place the training for new GP partners that we had been talking about for such a long time.  The course finally started in September of this year, and we have already learnt some interesting lessons along the way.

I teamed up with Tara Humphrey, PCN management expert, Director of THC Consulting and presenter of the Business of Healthcare podcast; Robert McCartney, general practice governance expert and Director of McCartney Healthcare Associates; Dr Naj Seedat, GP, trainer, partner in a large North East London practice and LMC Chair; and Dr Farzana Hussain, GP, GP appraiser, mentor, trainer and lecturer.  Together we formed a really strong team, designed to be able to meet all the development needs of new and aspiring GP partners.

We designed the course into 20 sessions, broken down across three broad areas: understanding the business (i.e. what goes on within the practice); understanding the environment (i.e. what is happening around the practice that affects it); and understanding the risks (i.e. how do you build a strategic plan for the future).  Naturally the weighting of the first area is greater than the other two, as there is so much within the business of a practice for any new partner to get their head around!

We wanted the course to not be too demanding on GP time, which is why we went for the model of an hour a fortnight over a period of 9 months.  This has worked to the extent that it has made the course manageable in terms of time for participants.  The challenge, however, has been how to cover such huge topics as managing people or understanding premises in just an hour.

We have been working hard to do this well, but for some topics we just had to extend the sessions.  For example, when accountant James Gransby ran the session on understanding the practice finances we had to make the session an hour and a half.  Even then it was hard to cover everything for such a complex topic!

The other challenge we have experienced is how to make the sessions interactive when there is so much content to work through.  In an hour the scope for really interactive sessions is limited, but at the same time the more interactive the sessions are the more valuable they can end up being for participants.

Another lesson we have learned is that one of the biggest challenges new partners experience is taking on the role as a business owner and what this means in terms of how they lead and manage staff.  This is a really critical area for GP partners, as their leadership style really affects the culture of the whole practice.

As a result of all this we have made some changes to the programme, for the next cohort of new or aspirant GP partners who will be joining.  In the new format content will be delivered over six monthly half day sessions.  This will allow us to create longer, more interactive sessions where we can tailor the content to the specific needs of those on the programme.

We have also included core strengths training as standard, as it really helps new partners understand and develop their leadership style, and given over a whole half day session to leading and managing people.

We always knew developing this training would be a journey, and that we would be learning as we went along.  We are delighted with how the programme is going so far, and excited to make the changes to make it even better going forward.

The programme for our next cohort commences on the 1^st February 2022.  We still have some places remaining, so if you or someone in your practice is interested you can find all the details here.  Alternatively get in touch and I am happy to talk through individually what we are doing so that you can work out whether it is right for you – I’m ben@ockham.healthcare.