In order to meet the continuing needs of our patients in the ever changing environment of the NHS is a difficult challenge. With tightened funding, significantly increasing demand for GP services and an ever widening amount of work we undertake with more complex conditions being managed in general practice and work shifting out from hospitals the need to continually evolve and develop is great.
The partners and team at our practice work very hard to continually improve and develop our services to match the needs of our population. We look for evidence to help improve the quality of care ensuring we follow best practice guidance and keep our knowledge up to date. THhs is achieved in a variety of ways including:
- robust use of appraisal system
- peer review and support of practice
- significant event analysis involving all staff
- regular training half days a year as a combination of in house and city wide
- being an advanced training practice having GP trainees, FY2 doctors, student nurses
- staff attending update and development courses- eg prescribing course for practice nurse and our clinical pharmacist, our nurse is on an advanced nurse practitioner programme.
We also work hard at reviewing our systems and processes to try to meet the needs of our patients through: appointment systems, consultation types, staff mix, technology, and communication skills.
We discuss and review the challenges and seek input from patients via our regular patient reference group meetings which all patients are invited to join.
We were one of the first practices in Leeds to implement online consultations and we are continually reviewing and improving the processes and use of this service.