A selection of the ARRs roles that our PCN provides.
- Clinical Pharmacy Team
- First Contact Physiotherapists
- Mental Health Practitioner
- Primary Care Paramedics
- Social Prescibers
Clinical pharmacy teams are increasingly working as part of general practice teams. They are highly qualified experts in medications and can help people in a range of ways. The correct selection, use and monitoring of medication is essential to ensure patients receive safe and effective treatment. This includes carrying out structured medication reviews for patients with ongoing health problems and improving patient safety, outcomes and value through a person-centred approach.
This includes providing extra help to manage long-term conditions, advice for those on multiple medicines and promoting better access to health checks. The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and ensuring patient safety.
Part of our PCN work is to improve care in our nursing and residential homes. The pharmacists are part of the multidisciplinary team who review patients with problems and undertake structured medication reviews to make sure patients are only on the medications they need.
The following NHS video helps to explain what a clinical pharmacist is:
Our First Contact Physiotherapy (FCP) Service allows patients to receive input from an expert in musculoskeletal conditions in the first instance. First-contact physiotherapists are advanced physiotherapists who are clinically competent to manage and treat musculoskeletal problems, which means you may not need to see a GP.
The specialist physiotherapist can assess you and suggest the most appropriate way to help you. They can also give you advice about any further investigations or treatment you may need and refer you to other services.
Our First Contact Physiotherapy Service will be able to see people with the following conditions:
- Joint pain
- Shoulder pain
- Tendon problems
- Muscle pain
- Sports injuries
- Knee problems
- Neck pain
- Soft tissue injuries
- Tennis elbow
- Back pain
- Osteoarthritis
- Trapped nerve
- Sciatica
The following video helps to explain what a first contact physiotherapist is:
Looking after our mental health is important for everyone. If you, or someone you know requires support, it’s important to find the right kind of help early on, and your GP can help you to do this. Mental health professionals are now available at your local GP practice to help you get the support you need, when you need it.
Mental health therapists and practitioners can help with:
- support in identifying current issues that you are struggling with
- providing tools and techniques to help manage symptoms
- supporting people who are experiencing the psychological effects of managing long-term conditions, such as diabetes
What are the benefits for GPs?
- alleviate time spent on mental health consultations
- improve the patient journey and overall experience
- faster access to appropriate mental health expertise
- early detection of mental health difficulties
- active case management to reduce the number of patients who fall between primary and secondary care services
Exclusions for our PCN Mental Health Practitioner are as follows:-
- Patient seeking medication or a fit note only
- Patients who are actively engaging with other mental health services such as counselling, IAPT secondary care services
- Patients under 18 years of age
The following video from the NHS helps to explain what a mental health practitioner does:
Traditionally, Paramedics have been most associated with emergency care, however, their skills are equally transferrable to GP patients with acute needs. Paramedic training allows them to quickly, but thoroughly, assess the situation they are presented with and, combined with their clinical judgement and experience, make decisions about care plans.
Acute Services
Our Paramedics offer daily Acute Minor Ailments Service (similar to Advanced Nurse Practitioners and Clinicians) and act as part of an expanding multi-disciplinary team to help manage the acute needs of patients within practice.
Home visits
Our home visits team work closely with the GPs at all practices in our network.
Every morning, the Teams check in with practices to confirm their availability for the day. This means practices know how many visits can be scheduled, helping everyone to make sure the patients with the most urgent need can be prioritised.
Requests come through when a GP has spoken with a housebound patient and an in-person clinical assessment is needed.
It’s essential the teams are agile and can respond quickly. A mobile phone and laptop mean the team stays connected and can access medical records before a visit. A bag stocked with equipment and supplies means they are prepared for all eventualities.
On arrival, our Paramedics introduce themselves and explain that the Doctor has asked them to pay a visit.
In the afternoon our paramedic team further support practices by undertaking home visits on behalf of the Practice across the whole of the PCN geographic area.
Benefits to Patients and GP Practices
One of Primary Care Networks’ key aims is to address health inequalities. For housebound patients, there can be an inequality of access as they can’t get to their GP to be seen or get treatment. Our visits team provide this service, meaning patients are not disadvantaged by their lack of mobility.
The flexible, responsive way our team works across all GP practices means patients get seen quicker than if they had to wait for a Doctor to be available.
For Doctors and practices, it is also efficient, knowing that following a call with a patient, a highly skilled clinician will be able to provide an in-person assessment, ensure the patient’s comfort and arrange treatment, referrals, admission, or other support quickly and thoroughly.
Because of the collaborative and connected way our network teams work with practices, all patient notes, referrals, and all other important health information is shared back to practices, so everyone involved in a patient’s care is aware of what is happening.
The following video from the NHS helps to explain what a Paramedic does:
Our Social Prescribing service will support you in improving your health and well-being. Social Prescribers will help you to develop personalised and practical solutions to everyday issues.
What is Social Prescribing?
There are times when we all need support to address life’s challenges. Knowing how to access available support locally can make a big difference. Social Prescribing helps you to explore services, groups and activities that can support you in improving your health and emotional well-being. Addressing difficult issues needs extra time and support.
Social Prescribers can help by:
- Giving you the time to explore and identify what is important for your health and well-being and the issues you’d like to address
- Providing support and encouragement to connect to services, groups and activities that can help
- They can speak with you on the phone or meet face-to-face (COVID restrictions allowing). And they will work with you to create a personalised plan to help you to connect with services in your community.
Areas they can support you to connect with include:
- Healthy lifestyles and active lives
- Arts, music, outdoors and creativity
- Befriending, counselling and other support groups
- Housing, benefits and financial support and advice
- Employment, training and volunteering
- Education and learning
- Getting involved in local groups and activities
- Accessing specialist services and support
Social Prescribers Are:
- Someone you can talk to confidentially
- Someone who is practical, helpful and who will not judge you
- Someone who can help you decide what you’d like to do to improve your health and wellbeing
- Someone who can find you support and activities that will suit you
- Someone who can give you support along the way
Am I Eligible?
The service is available to people living in our area, aged 16 and over, who are experiencing issues affecting their physical or mental health and well-being.
How do I access the Service?
Please speak to your GP Surgery about how to access our Social Prescribing Service.
You can find out more about Social Prescribing by watching this video: