Nursing in Practice: Airbrushed out and ignored
Nursing in Practice’s Autumn issue explores concerns from nurses that their role is not being considered while changes in primary care are planned. General practice nurses have been a central pin of general practice for decades, but is their voice being heard sufficiently loudly by government?
General practice nurses experience ‘a pattern of being ignored’ despite their vital contributions within the health service, according to the chief executive of the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI). In an exclusive interview with Nursing in Practice that leads the publication’s autumn print edition, Dr Crystal Oldman says GPNs must be given the recognition they deserve by NHS England.
The way the work of GPNs is being ‘airbrushed out of everything’ is leaving a damaging and lasting impact on their morale, she warns. Nurses were particularly enraged at finding that NHE England’s GP recovery plan [Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care] largely ignored the contribution of nursing, and that nursing leaders were absent from the plan’s development.
In Nursing in Practice’s Autumn issue, our news editor writes exclusively about ongoing capacity shortages for nurses in general practice to offer contraceptive services, such as long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). More should be done in general practice to promote the provision of women’s healthcare, and the key role of trained nurses in providing evidence-based advice and guidance to women in this important area.
And with autumn and winter workload in general practice in mind, this edition of Nursing in Practice explores the current challenge of recruiting more nurses into GPN roles, alongside current clinical priorities such as the new shingles vaccine programme, flu and Covid vaccinations, leg ulceration, plus an insightful overview of the management of sickle cell, and a quick quiz on HIV.
More content from Nursing in Practice can be found at nursinginpractice.com, via the Nursing in Practice app, and on social media.