New network hopes to end GPN ‘isolation’
A new network for general practice nurses has been established by the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI), which aims to become the “professional home” for the specialty.
The QNI’s network, which is free to join and funded by the National Garden Scheme, was formally launched earlier this month by chief executive Dr Crystal Oldman.
“[GPNs] can be professionally very isolated”
Crystal Oldman
Dr Oldman told Nursing Times that it was designed to combat “professional isolation” some practice and other primary care nurses experience due to working in smaller organisations with less access to other people in their field than a nurse in, for example, an acute hospital trust.
“General practice nurses (GPNs) work in a very disparate way,” said Dr Oldman. “It’s not like working for a community trust or for a hospital trust, where you are all brought together under the same employer.
“They’re all working for individual employers and sometimes there’s only two or three nurses in a practice.
“So, they can be professionally very isolated, albeit working in a lovely environment with a lovely team, serving a great community, doing a great job professionally – you can feel quite isolated.”
The QNI boss said the network would help GPNs remain “professionally connected and updated” with their peers.
QNI chief executive Crystal Oldman speaking at a roundtable event
As well as facilitating communication between primary care nursing staff, the network will create learning tools, share best practice, sets up speaking events and run workshops and webinars.
Further, the QNI said it hoped to advocate for primary care nursing, raise its profile and “articulate the value” of GPNs within primary care teams.
Dr Oldman said there had been demand for such a network for years, but that the “resource intense” nature of running one properly was a barrier.
The launch of the group now has been possible thanks to funding from the National Garden Scheme, which facilitates the opening up of private gardens to visitors and raises money for nursing and health charities in the process.
At the GPN network’s launch event at the start of September, the first of what the QNI hopes will be many taught sessions was held.
The workshop focused on wellbeing, a topic Dr Oldman said was something nurses at larger hospital trusts had better access to training and support for.
Before the network was set up, Dr Oldman said the only other support structure like it was the Royal College of Nursing (RCN)’s primary care nurse forum, which she said the QNI’s one would compliment and build upon.
Dr Oldman said she was pleasantly surprised at the response to the network so far, and outlined her high hopes for it in the future.
“We we are mindful that there are around 26,000 general practice nurses in the country, and we would love as many as possible of those to be members of the network,” she said.
The creation of the primary care network, Dr Oldman said, followed the success of the QNI’s other, similar ventures, such as its network for care home nurses which has more than 2,500 members.
“Care home nurses are in very similar positions [to GPNs],” said Dr Oldman.
“They sometimes work for individual employers in small care homes, there’s a lot of parallels, where you’ve got that potential for professional isolation.”
Angie Hack, QNI assistant director of nursing programmes for general practice and primary care, leads the network.
Speaking shortly after the network’s launch event, Ms Hack said: “The QNI has been working for some years to support GPNs, raising their profile as a crucial part of the primary care workforce.
“I look forward to extending our new network to many more nurses in general practice and making new connections with people at all stages of their careers.”
