Personal development Resources

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused us to rapidly change the way we work. If we look back to where we were this time last year, while we may have been aware of ensuing problems, we probably had little idea of the full impact of what lay ahead and how quickly we would all need to adapt. Here, Julie Catchpole, director and founder of Rotherham Respiratory, reflects on how the organisation has adapted its courses to ensure that healthcare professionals continue to access education and training to provide optimum patient care.

Telephone and video consultations have become a prominent part of practice in the pandemic, bringing undoubted benefits but also some challenges. Due to the inability to examine patients or read their body language, successful remote consulting may call for some adjustments to the normal way of talking with patients. Here, Dr Roger Neighbour OBE, retired GP from Hertfordshire and a past President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, considers how to prepare for and begin a remote consultation, describing a simple seven-stage approach to clinical problem-solving: getting the story, doing the clinical work, and agreeing the management plan. It encourages you to think aloud as a way of keeping the patient involved, and offers some advice on bringing the conversation to a close.

The first piece of this two-part series explored the context for leadership in general practice nursing, our role as leaders, and perceived barriers to nurses fully utilising their leadership potential in the general practice setting. Here, Jaqui Walker, general practice nurse/advanced nurse practitioner (GPN/ANP), Falkirk, explores why we should lead, who can lead, leadership styles and behaviours for ANP/GPNs, and how to develop leaders. Written from the political setting of Scotland, this article is applicable to nurses across the four nations of the UK and suggests, as part of our leadership skills, we should all make ourselves aware of the context within which we work.

In this first of a two-part series exploring leadership in general practice, Jaqui Walker, general practice nurse/advanced nurse practitioner, Falkirk, Scotland, looks at the context for leadership in general practice nursing, our role as leaders, and perceived barriers to nurses fully utilising their leadership potential in the general practice setting. Part two will explore why we should lead, who can lead, leadership styles and behaviours for ANP/GPNs and how to develop leaders.