Falkirk health: More work needed to improve GPs' workload

Members of Falkirk’s Integrated Joint Board – which oversees health and social care locally – heard last Friday that the Primary Care Improvement Plan has made “excellent progress” over its first four years.

Since 2018, the Primary Care Improvement Plan has been rolled out across 50 practices across Forth Valley, introducing nearly 200 health professionals, including advanced nurse practitioners, physios, pharmacists and mental health nurses.

The report quotes Dr Kathleen Brennan, a Forth Valley GP, who says the expanded general practice team has been invaluable for GPs, whose work has changed dramatically in recent years.

She says that the role of a GP has become much more complex, as many things that were traditionally managed in hospital now being managed in the community.

That has created a workload that is “overwhelming” and the need to look at how to manage it.

“As GPs, we love seeing our patients and getting to know them and how best to help them – that’s what we do, that’s what we want to do.” she said.

“But because of the sheer amount of work that we have, we want to be able to do that for our most complex patients where our skills are needed most of all.”

“I think the perception has always been that the GP is the person you need to see but actually these additional members of the team are highly trained – they really know their stuff about their area and so actually are going to be far more beneficial to see than waiting for a GP.”

The plan has seen all vaccination programmes taken away from GP’s completely; more than 12,000 prescriptions are generated by the pharmacotherapy team now; and the Community Treatment and Care team now has capacity for 10,000 phlebotomy appointments.

There was also praise for the role advanced nurse practitioners played in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of the Care Home Assessment and Response Team, they effectively took over from GPs to provide medical care and support at a hugely difficult time for patients and staff.

In a survey of local doctors, just one GP said the new team did not help reduce workload. Most were positive about the scheme but 80 per cent of those who responded agreed that more funding is needed to fully implement it.

Challenges include difficulties with recruitment into many of the specialist roles and there are concerns that when members of staff go off sick it is very difficult for the GP’s to manage.

Another concern is that many doctors’ surgeries simply do not have the space to accommodate any extra services.

Introducing the report, Dr David Herron said: “In summary, I would advise that we have made excellent progress over the initial four-year period. The work has helped to improve the sustainability and resilience of our GP practices but the caution is that there is still a lot more work to be done.”