Today is presentation day at BCU! We woke up pretty early to get down to the lobby at 8:50. My group was working overtime to finish our slides this morning. We had to quickly get our citations done, run through our speaker notes, download the slides, get our speaker notes sorted out, and figure out how to combat the wifi issues that have been presented to us at BCU lately. But, I think we got it turned around in the shortened period and we should be good to go. After everyone gathered down in the lobby we began the normal walk to BCU. On the walk over we talked about how many people we think may be there, as far as we are aware right now there will be at least 15 other people, but it seems like there may be way more coming. Hopefully their expectations are not too high as our turn around period for the project was greatly shortened but I’m not sure how much they were debriefed on the situation so it’ll be what it’ll be. While this has definitely been a source of stress for my group I know that we will all be happy once it’s over and we can relax a little and only have to worry about the daily blogs!

Before we presented today though we received a large chat about general practitioners and nurses that work in the general practice field. Similar to how it is in the United States, there is a big deficit in the general practice field. There’s not enough practitioners, not enough nurses, and not enough of any of the other staff. Slowly the field is running out of spots to take more people in to care for, so it’s becoming vital that more positions are being invented in the field and more people are stepping up to fill the current roles that aren’t properly filled.​​ The list of people that work in the field include but is not limited to: student nurses BSc, student nurses MSci, return to practice nurses, student nurse associates, nurse associates, general practice nurses, healthcare support workers, advanced nurse practitioners, general practitioners, paramedics, physiotherapists, physician associates, pharmacy technicians, clinical pharmacists, GP assistants, and non clinical roles (reception, admin, medical secretary).  

We talked to two educators that have been working in the field for a long time. They dove into all the problems that people in the general practice field face. First, lots of time they have to deal with mass hysteria from the general public. People hear things from their friends, morning talk shows, and from unreliable sources and go crazy. They hear things and immediately call the practice or show up to ask questions that they don’t need to ask. Instead of using google they use the practices as their own personal google. Second, they also have to deal with the anti vax craze that happened recently. Between the pandemic and the paper that was provided with no factual evidence the vaccination field has been a mess. There’s been an increase of measles in the UK lately because parents are not getting their kids the mmr vaccine. Finally, they have to deal with the general problems that come with working in general practice. Grumpy attitudes about wait time, limited resources, and more. 

Afterwards we spoke to two nurses that work in the field as nurses currently. This was really cool as we have not gotten a chance to hear from any working nurses in the field. They were able to explain their own personal opinions on the pros and cons of the NHS that they get to experience first hand. While the free healthcare is wonderful, they did express a couple of downsides that seem to be pretty common across the board. They don’t like the wait that comes with the NHS. Because so many people need help, the wait lists can be extremely long. There’s no open beds left in hospitals and the waitlists are astronomically long. Because it’s free care for everyone, many people come from out of the country to receive healthcare and then leave after they receive their procedures which backs up the system a lot. This leads to lots of angry patients as there aren’t enough providers to care for the ever growing list of needs. 

Now we’re on our way to do our presentations. Will update! I think that overall our presentation went okay! Every time I present I’m reminded how few times a school year I do it and that I’m actually pretty bad at it which is always humbling. But, the information in the slides was good and I think overall the group did very well! We were able to answer all our questions and got through with no issues. Unfortunately I was standing on the squeakiest part of the floor for the entire time so that was probably annoying but otherwise I believe everything else went well!