We started our day by walking to Birmingham City University for one of our last days programming there. We took the lovely back entrance with the nature path. As we entered we we met up with our BCU coordinator, Ana, who has planned out all of our insightful lectures, meals, and field trips. She is amazing at her job. She showed us the way to the classroom where we would be lectured by primary care experts in the field of nursing.

Sue is a nurse practitioner, nurse educator, and nurse associate facilitator. She explained her role in the primary healthcare system in the United Kingdom. She offers support and guidance not only to students but also qualified nurses who wish to enter general practice or continue their career within this area of care. Sue also promotes growth of the primary and social care workforce to include the supported provision of experiences. I love how the nurses roles in the UK are more than assumed just by their title. Their nursing roles are all multidimensional in nature, so they work with the broader community and system to enhance healthcare education and delivery to all citizens. They also have more authority and autonomy in the UK to make healthcare decisions and to serve as an essential voice in the system, yet they are paid less than U.S. nurses.

The nursing educators taught us more about the National Health Service (NHS) as well as the UK’s healthcare system as well. 111 is a system the UK has that supports the healthcare system by providing accessible general practitioner (GP) access. The U.S. lacks any universal system to provide its citizens with a program to efficiently access primary care health professionals. There is a major shortage of primary care physicians in the states, so a system like 111 would greatly benefit the citizens in finding a medical professional to provide essential preventative and treatment based care.

The other nursing speaker is a healthcare assistant named Shelly, is employed by a general practitioner. Like Sue, she is also a nurse associate facilitator. She is passionate about promoting career progression within primary care nursing workforce and inspires, facilitates, and supports all HCSWs (Healthcare Support Workers) and SNA/NAs (nursing assistants) across the BSOL (British Standards Online) patch, whether that can be in education or training or career progression to ensure the recruitment and retention of these roles within the nursing workforce. As far as I know, the U.S., again, lacks professionals that work to retain and provide benefits for their vital nursing employees in a specific speciality. Programs and professionals like these are crucial to prevent nursing burnout. It also helps the nursing workforce realize what a large impact their care has when they are acknowledged for it. The teamwork and community based values the UK holds shines in both the healthcare and educational system. Their health and education outcomes usually reflect this successful foundation they employ in their systems.

Both of the speakers spoke about their BSOL Training Hub. The British Standards Online plays a key role in transforming and delivering the NHS primary care workforce of the future.  Her team is dedicated to ensuring patients receive quality care from competent and appropriately-trained healthcare professionals. Futuristic programs in the UK’s health system works to assure stability and security to future British generations. In terms of BSOL, the future British generations are assured that the system is constantly working to improve the delivery and retainment of nursing workforce within the speciality of primary care. Program like these create a sense of security when the children today grow into adults, because they will be able to access high-quality primary care for themselves and for their children or loved ones. Futuristic thinking desperately needs to be utilized in all of the United States systems to save and protect the future generations. Thinking about long term effects systems will have on generations to come is brilliant and needs to be employed more every where in the world.

Sue and Shelly then talked to us about the role of a advanced nurse practitioner in the speciality of primary care. Their expertise was right up my alley, because I hope to one day be a primary care nurse practitioner serving either women or children and I conduct research on healthcare policy with a focus on integrating nurse practitioners internationally into the primary care roles of society. I asked both of them as primary care nursing professionals what they think the difference is in terms of health outcomes and patient satisfaction when a patient sees a nurse practitioner as a GP rather than a physician as a GP. They responded by saying that NPs prescribe referrals and take the time to educate rather than just prescribe because they realize prescription drugs aren’t always the answer. From their experience they say they take the time to ask the patient the why questions when the patient seems to be self-diagnosing so they can obtain a more clear picture of the whole patient. They said NPs also often provide patients common analogies when educating their patients on their healthcare, treatment plan, or side effects of their prescription drugs to have the patient fully grasp what they are saying. They take the time to sit down and explain the steps and ask the patients follow up questions to be certain the patients understood their teaching. This strategy is fabulous, because effective communication is is fully displayed if the patient can recite and explain what their NP just provided them with. The additional time, education, and advocacy NPs provide to their patients makes big differences on patient satisfaction and health outcomes. Whereas, GP physicians often avoid questions because they are so busy and do not want to waste their time educating and asking the patient the difficult or personal questions relating to their medical problem. They said NPs practice not giving into patient power and instead focus and advocate for what is the best for the patient overall.

To wrap of the presentation they shared a powerful quote by the creator of the NHS explaining why all people have the human right to free healthcare. They took this statement straight to home by saying that primary care serves as the front door of the NHS, so in order for the UK population to be healthy, it starts with the primary care specialities. This is everything I could ever hope to hear from primary care experts in a developed country like the UK. I hope to serve as the front door of care to either women or children when I graduate the University of Pittsburgh and make the remarkable differences and connections with patients, like they described it.

After this marvelous presentation, Sue and Shelly ran a creative escape-room like activity to help us employ leadership and teamwork roles. I loved this activity and my group opened all of their boxes except for one. 🙂

It was then my turn to present to the faculty of BCU on our findings and it went splendid. They were such an engaging and supportive audience. I enjoyed answering their questions and sharing the U.S. health system with them.

Tomorrow we shadow nurses in a nursing home and then have our final lecture in BCU. Where did the time go?