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7 May 2020
Dear Colleague
Today I have three items for you, for all practice team members, and in particular our amazing nurses.
- An update to our Londonwide LMCs Covid-19 Living Guide, version 6.
- Our companion document General Practice During The Pandemic: The Role of the General Practitioner and Practice Team.
- Our first Londonwide LMCs Guide to Support Nurses in General Practice to Care for Patients During the Covid-19 Era.
1. An update to our Londonwide LMCs Covid-19 Living Guide, version 6 which contains a new section on patient registration, and updates to our advice to practice teams and links on a range of operational issues including:
- supporting care homes;
- monitoring patients with Covid-19, and
- NHS 111.
2. Our companion document General Practice During The Pandemic: The Role of the General Practitioner and Practice Team focuses on how practice teams are adapting to the Covid-19 challenge and some of the future implications of this period of rapid change. It also contains guidance on a number of areas, including:
- emergency/urgent care;
- long-term conditions (LTCs),
- prevention and health promotion,
- end of life care, and
- patient and local community advocacy.
3. Today is also specially aimed at nurses working in our general practices. Please would you pass this on to colleagues in your teams, and if any nurse or healthcare support worker doesn’t regularly receive the MWord, please would you ask them to connect with us by sending their name, email address and practice to mword@lmc.org.uk.
With International Nurses Day approaching this coming Tuesday 12 May, on behalf of the team at Londonwide LMCs, I want to offer a massive thank you to all the nurses and healthcare support workers that enable our general practices to provide the superb care that our patients receive day in, day out. Please, please know how much you are appreciated by your GP colleagues and by the patients you look after, for the care you give and the work you do to sustain our front line practices, especially during these unprecedented times.
Please also know as our nurses, as for all members of our practice teams in the Capital, we at Londonwide LMCs are by your side, as are we for the whole practice team, our PCNs, and our federations.
And in that vein, today we are publishing our first Londonwide LMCs Guide to Support Nurses in General Practice to Care for Patients During the Covid-19 Era, covering the essentials of long term conditions.
As Kathryn Yates (kathryn.yates@lmc.org.uk), our Londonwide LMCs Director of Nursing, says in the introduction:
The aim of this guide is to support nurses working in general practice with caring for and monitoring the health of patients with long term conditions, during Covid-19 and potentially beyond. As nurses working in general practice it is important to recognise that we come from a wide range of career backgrounds, we each bring our own knowledge, skills and experience to our role, and that we practice within our competences. With the full QOF scheme in abeyance this year, this guide endeavours to identify the key areas that are familiar to most general practice nurses – reflecting the templates on our systems - whilst acknowledging the range of practice and expertise that exists among us and our practices. We hope you find this resource helpful, and are interested in your feedback.
Finally today, we really do want to improve our Londonwide LMCs support to you at ground level – you are the life blood of our work, we cannot care for people without you, and we know that like GPs, you have tough jobs in an NHS world which does not recognise our true value or potential as professionals, or the holistic approach we are all trained to give. We need more nurses in our practices, not fewer. Let’s use the opportunity that the NHS “reset” provides to show that practice-based holistic care - not tick-box care - delivered collaboratively by GPs and nurses in general practice, with others and with patients, is how better outcomes are achieved on the ground, and is also the key to our job satisfaction.
As ever I welcome your feedback at mword@lmc.org.uk, and know that my team of experts and leaders here at Londonwide LMCs will always be by your side.
Keep well. Stay safe. And please try to get some down time over this long sunny weekend.
With best wishes
Dr Michelle Drage MBBS FRCGP
CEO, Londonwide LMCs
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