Today our day started out with breakfast and coffee as usual and then we made our way over to BCU for a lecture and skills day! Our first lecture was given by two nurses from the Birmingham and Solihull Training Hub, Sue and Shelly. Sue introduced herself and explained her experience within the field. She has been a nurse for 30 years and has worked in the hospital, social care and communities, and a district nurse. She is now not clinically working but in the education of nurses. She told us that her favorite part clinical of nursing is wound care, which I found very interesting. Throughout our lecture she said that “ Nurses have a dark sense of humor, it’s what gets us through”, which I agree with even as a prospective nurse. Nurses have to have certain qualities to allow them to be able to push through the dark sides of the medical field while relying on others. Then Shelly introduced herself and told us that she has been a district nurse, in social care, and is now a general practitioner for 17 years. She is not a registered nurse but a health care assistant. She is the lead for a nursing team of 6 people for a practice. Shelly told us that she is most interested in phlebotomy and works at an anti coagulation clinic in Birmingham. 

We first talked about what the BSOL training hub is. Their role is transforming and delivering the NHS primary care workforce of the future in general practice. Their team is dedicated to ensuring patients receive quality from competent and appropriately trained healthcare professionals. They aim to meet the needs of the current and future workforce and strive to promote primary care as a desirable place to work. Only qualified nurses can work within this training hub. There are 194 GP practices and they all will join to make a primary care network, and there is currently 35 primary care networks. We then went into what primary care is. It is provided within the community for people making an initial approach to medical practitioner or clinic for advice or treatment. It provides the first point of contact within the healthcare system  and is heavily sought out for. Gp partners now are contracted to receive payment under the General Medical Services Contract to manage the care of the NHS registered patients. We then started to talk about the NHS funding and how it works. We learned it is general taxation for all working people in England and they pay a national insurance contribution where a small amount of this helps to fund the NHS. All general surgeries are independently owned businesses and have been since the start of the NHS. GP ended up getting payed by the partners they work with within their practice and not the NHS. We also learned that GP have to negotiate their own wages and stays of leave like maternity. They don’t generally get maternity or sick pay unless they have been with their practice for while or are with a good team. Both Sue and Shelly mentioned that you need to know your worth so that you are able to advocate for yourself and get what you deserve. The hours of the practices depend on your locality and some practices stay open for longer hours than the other practices around them and often get the referrals because of their long hours. 

We then moved onto talking about PCN, which is the primary care network. This is a network of practices working with other providers to improve health and wellbeing of patients in their locality with shared funding for community services for example respiratory service, wound care service, urology service and dermatology service. They told us that it’s important that the patients are catered to, which to mean has to do with equity versus equality. A lot of the times people fight for equality for all which may help some people but equity should be more emphasized. People need to be given exactly what they need because each person has a different situation and different needs. 

We talked about prescription charges and how paying for your medication works. Before going into this lecture I was under the impression that literally everything within healthcare is free besides when people decided to go to private services. Patients over the age of 65 and under the age of 16 can get free prescriptions. Also patient with chronic illnesses like diabetes, thyroid, cancer, colostomy get free medication. People without these complications or age ranges don’t get the ability to have free medication. 

We also talked about one of the negative side effects of the NHS being the waiting times. Appointments are booked based on priority and not first come first served. Since the pandemic waiting times have increased significantly. Most GPs will be able to see you in two weeks for a routine appointment but if you need an urgent appointment you will have to ring on the day or attend an urgent care treatment center. There is a new initiative called pharmacy first. This is when a patient should present to their local pharmacy for their minor ailments, including earache, sore throat, and UTI aiming to address health issues before they get worse and freeing up GP appt times. We learned about the point of care testing machine being the CRP level measurer. This is a blood test that can show whether there is an infection and if an antibiotic needs to be prescribed. 

We had a break after our lecture from these nurses and then we learned from clinically practicing nurses. We learned that its not just specialized but a lot of skills are required. There are 10 nurses are on a team and they take care of 17,000 patients. These types of nurses are trying to take pressure off of hospitals. And students observe for a couple of weeks and then try to get set up in a clinic. Also during covid there were a lot of phone calls made because of declining mental health.

After this we had a lunch break and then came back to the same classroom where we did an escape room with the guest lecturers. We were given 5 different task to carry out in order to open specific lock boxes. The escape room was really fun! We then took a break to practice our presentations and make any last minute needed changes. We then gave our presentations and they went really well !