GP pleads ‘Sort it out’
Shropshire GPs told a county NHS meeting that family doctors feel like changes are “being done to us rather than being done with us” as the health service adopts new ways of working.
The county’s acute hospitals and community services are going through the process of using ‘virtual wards’ and ‘rapid response teams’ to try to reduce sustained high demand on urgent and emergency care.
GPs are a critical part of caring for more people in the community but two GPs who attended a board meeting of NHS Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin that family doctors have been ‘kicking off’ about the topic.
They have been using a WhatsApp group to share their concerns, leaders heard.
Dr Charlotte Hart, a partner at Radbrook Green Surgery and Clinical Director for Shrewsbury Primary Care Network (PCN), made a plea to board members at their meeting on Wednesday (April 30) to ‘sort it out’ as it is leading to professionals ‘butting heads.”
Dr Hart, who was attending her first board meeting, said: “My concern is that if we are going to be putting a lot of our hope on moving things to virtual wards, rapid response in the community-based services.
“They are not working as well as they could at the moment.”
Dr Hart added: “My plea to partners is please can we sort this out.
“Because at the moment it is causing GPs and community trust staff to butt heads and I don’t want us to butt heads, I want us to work together and I want it to be constructive.”
She said she agreed that virtual wards, where patients are looked after by teams at home instead of hospitals, and rapid response teams are good
“But there are issues with how the process has been set up, so this needs to be sorted out in plenty of time for winter.”
She said it is “affecting patient care, it’s winding GPs up, it’s winding up Shropcom staff as well because we all think we are right.
“And we all are, but it is a process.”
Dr Jess Harvey, a partner at Much Wenlock and Cressage Medical Practice and Clinical Director of South-East Shropshire PCN, said: “General practice feels like it’s something that is being done to us rather than being done with us.”
She said she was raising concerns to improve the process because new ways of working are “here to stay, we want to make the best for everybody.”
Andrew Morgan, chair in common of Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust and The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said: “We don’t get up in the morning to irritate our colleagues.”
But he added that they “need to find a way of sorting it between us.”
Ned Hobbs, Chief Operating Officer of SaTH, said the hospitals are working on improving the flow of patients through hospitals.
This includes maximizing the skills of primary care staff in urgent treatment centres, and more “same day emergency care” with patients not staying overnight.
Claire Horsfield, Director of Operations at Shropcom, said alternatives to urgent and emergency care are about providing the “right care, at the right time, in the right place and by the correct healthcare professional.”
That means “building clinical trust,” she said.
Jo Williams, Chief Executive of SaTH is leading the county NHS work on urgent and emergency care, said: “I think as we go forward we need each other more than ever.”
But she added that she is “not complacent” of the issues involved.
Pic: Doctors Charlotte Hart, left, and Jess Harvey – NHS STW
