My role at Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) is, like many other ICB nurses, wide and varied, covering the full range of health services. I have been working in a commissioning environment for just over 7 years now, initially in a small clinical commissioning group (CCG), which merged with 3 other CCGs and then became an ICB.
I started to take an interest in General Practice Nurses (GPNs) in 2017, when I ran our CCG Practice Nurse Forum. As someone who had spent their whole career in acute nursing (neonatal and paediatrics), this was a setting I was very unfamiliar with, and I strived to understand more about how I could support this group of nurses.
That same year, I embarked on a Post Graduate Diploma in Health Care Leadership at South Bank University as part of NHS Improvement’s Aspiring Nurse Director Programme. For my first assignment, I had to write about a leadership challenge in my area of work, and I chose General Practice Nursing. I had recognised that within Lincolnshire this group of nurses were working across over 90 practices with no collective voice and no clear leadership.
As luck would have it, NHS England issued their ten point plan for GNPs around the same time I was working on my assignment. This plan recognised many of the same issues I had identified locally and offered a national framework for improvement. I knew this was something I would be really keen to progress in Lincolnshire.
To advance this work, I decided to set up a Lincolnshire-wide GPN Reference Group, with the support of our 4 CCG Executive Nurses. The group attracted a wide range of attendees, including nurses working in practice, Health Education England, Lincolnshire Training Hub, our Local Medical Committee and relevant higher education institutions.
Over the years, this group has gone on to achieve significant success. Some of the highlights have been:
- Launching a Career Start programme for nurses who are newly qualified or new to general practice.
- Establishing a Trainee Nurse Associate programme in general practice which has achieved comparable numbers to our local NHS Trusts.
- Developing a successful Return to Practice Programme for general practice.
- Organising an annual GPN conference and GPN awards.
- Establishing a process for allocating workforce development funding across practices based on a training needs analysis and commissioning well-evaluated training programmes.
- Launching a mentorship programme for those on Career Start, including Nurse Associates.
- Promoting general practice as a place to work at universities, colleges and schools.
As a result of these successes, I believe we’re now in a place where general practice nurses have a collective voice and professional leadership. This puts us on an equal footing with our NHS Trusts when it comes to applying for workforce development funding and having a voice at the table of our ICB’s People Board. Regionally and nationally, we have gained a reputation as a safe pair of hands for delivering on programmes of work, allowing us to attract funding for specific pilots, such as our General Practice Nurse Speciality Training Programme.
None of the above would have been possible without the investment in time and passion of the partners within the GPN Reference Group – a visionary and innovative group of people that I’m proud to work alongside. I must also pay a huge tribute to the Lincolnshire Training Hub. You could not wish for a more inspirational group of GPNs, Nursing Associates and Programme Management Team members who every day set the bar higher.
My heartfelt thanks go out to all that have supported this work, but most of all my gratitude goes to all those nurses working up and down the country in general practice. Every day, you are making a difference.
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