General practice nursing report

The four Healthwatch of the Black Country; Healthwatch Dudley, Healthwatch Sandwell, Healthwatch Walsall and Healthwatch Wolverhampton were commissioned by Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) on behalf of Black Country and West Birmingham Sustainable Transformation Partnership (STP) to carry out work collecting feedback from patients about their knowledge and experiences of using General Practice Nurses to help inform the decision making of several projects linked into the STP Primary Care Strategy.  220 people were engaged via focus groups.

Although some participants had good knowledge of the roles of practice nurses many did not, and the lack of knowledge meant there was possible under use of nurse appointments. Having more information on the roles and skills of nurses would help some patients to decide whether to book an appointment with a nurse instead of a GP.

The availability of appointments to see a nurse as opposed to waiting for a GP appointment was seen as one of the positive reasons for booking appointments with a nurse, along with the perception that nurses had more empathy than doctors and had more time for patients.

A number of participants felt that they were more likely to make an appointment to see a nurse for female related issues as there was a perception that practice nurses were generally female as opposed to GPs being more predominantly male. The perception of nurse and doctor roles being gender specific whilst helpful to encourage some patients to make nurse appointments can also mean that male patients could be less likely to consider making a nurse appointment.

Whilst there was general agreement that having more information on the roles and skills of nurses would help to encourage more patients to make appointments with nurses, there was not a single suggestion of ways that that information could be made more widely available. However, it was the case that it was seen as the responsibility of the practices to make patients aware of the roles of their nurses.

It was seen as a missed opportunity, that online booking did not signpost patients to nurse appointments or allow them to book nurse appointments online. Development of this alongside any other information on websites or in practice waiting rooms provides an opportunity to improve take up of nurse appointments. However, the key way that take up of nurse appointments could be improved could be through signposting by reception staff as part of a triage process when appointments are booked. Whilst this is used in some practices it was not the case for all of the participants in the engagement, but that approach was widely supported by those that took part.

There were 5 recommendations about how to improve take up of nurse practitioner appointments.