Top GP Calls For Expansion Of Nursing Roles In Primary Care

23 October 2009

One of the UK's leading GPs has called for the expansion of practice nurse roles to enable GPs to offer longer consultations and commission 24 hour care for patients.

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners proposed that nurses take on many of the tasks that GPs did to improve patient care and free up GP time.

GPs needed consultations with patients lasting 15-20 minutes, focusing on the whole of the patient and provide continuity of care. What GPs were not, were minor illness walk-in-centre people. When a GP saw a patient, that patient should become the centre of his or her universe.

GPs needed to work in an integrated system with practices nurses, with greater focus on the whole team, not just GPs.

One of the worst things GPs did was to give up responsibility for commissioning 24 hour care, he continued, and they should take back responsibility for 24 hour care, though this would pose some challenges to the GP contract.

Professor Field called for more nurses and advanced nurse practitioners in primary care. He added that the RCGP was launching a forum for practice nurses as part of efforts to increase its focus on the primary care team.

An Independent Nurse survey this year found that one in four practices had cut staff in 2008 and one in five of these cut nursing staff.

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