 and welcome back to the vlog. My name is Claire Carmichael and I am a general practice nurse. So today's vlog is all about how to progress and the types of progression that you can do as a general practice nurse because a lot of people think that once you're a general practice nurse that's it, so it's at the end of your days and that's just not true. So the first thing you can do is you can specialise in a certain area so if you're really into diabetes management or things like asthma or COPD, anything like hypertension, you can specialise in those areas and you can become like the specialist lead for your clinic if that makes sense. You could do things like women's health, there's an amazing role out there especially for women's health as well to deal with things like menopause, things that people don't really talk about or shy away from which shouldn't happen but it does. There are set roles to do that as well. The next thing you can do is you can do a prescribing course so you could become a nurse prescriber as well. That's sort of like the next step that you can take. I'm trying to do it like step by step, it might not be in a particular order though so don't quote me on this. But yes, you can do your prescribing course at university and become a nurse prescriber and then you can also do the advanced nurse practitioners course and this means that you please don't quote me on this but I think it's almost on par as like a junior doctor so you will be more sort of diagnosing different symptoms in patients, you'll be doing like chest examinations, you are like a junior doctor in a way rather than dealing with like long-term condition management and health promotion and things that we do as general practice nurse and you will also be able to prescribe as well as an advanced nurse practitioner. And you don't really need years and years of experience either to become an advanced nurse practitioner. I know someone that went in as a newly qualified nurse into general practice and then she went straight in for an advanced nurse practitioner course like straight away so I know there are some requirements that you have to have I think a minimum of three years experience as a GP nurse but people will take you on and put you through the advanced nurse practitioner course as well so have a look around and see what you want to do. So the next thing that you can do is you can become a GP partner. So this is I'm still not 100% certain on the whole role of this but you are going to be the person that kind of makes decisions and choices about the running of the practice that you're working at. So it'll be more of a money side of things and business management side of things and how things are organised like that sort of thing. Again don't quote me on this I'm not 100% certain on business partners because I don't get involved in that sort of area as a GP nurse. I don't do that sort of role so I can only go by what I know already if that makes sense but yes you can be a GP nurse partner and have the control of some of the decisions which I think is amazing because I think in every single practice there should be a nurse partner, there should be a GP partner, even an advanced nurse practitioner partner to get a whole scale of different partners so you've got an input from each member. I think that's a really really good idea I think. Another thing that you can do is work with alongside the training hubs and the CCGs so you could do things like more education so educating students that you get into your clinics, setting up training packages for them, the nurses and newly qualified nurses as well coming into your practice, all those sort of things so it's more of an education role. Also you could work alongside the universities and do lecturing as well as the university as well as doing your clinics that's another thing that you potentially do. You could also become the lead nurse for your area so you could be the lead nurse for your whole clinic and as well as your whole area so each area or each city will have their own areas so we have three GP practices in our area so you could be the lead nurse for those three GP practices if that makes sense so wherever you are you will be the lead nurse for all those GP practices and I think that would be an amazing role to go into to be honest and I imagine that role to be more again it's more like business management it's more overseeing the practices doing audits and targets and running of the practices what can be done better improving what's not going to well and how can we do things differently. I think there's going to be a lot of like CQC stuff as well inspections a lot of paperwork side of it that's what I see in my head anyway but as well as that supporting the staff and being that overall person that people can come to as well again doing dealing with the training and that sort of thing so I think overall that role to me sounds amazing I think that sounds like an absolutely fantastic role and then you could be go a step up and actually be ahead of your region so you can be your general practice nurse head of region so you're not just the lead nurse anymore you are the head of your whole region it's not just localized anymore it's absolutely everybody that's classed in your region how many times can I say region in this vlog sorry guys and then a step up from region is literally UK wide you could be the head of general practice nursing at the top basically and then if you really wanted to progress you could go for the cno position if nursing officer role that is roof mate at the minute if you really wanted to go up up up and have all of that going on then you could absolutely do that as well and a very different type of role that you could do is more digital sort of communications and marketing that sort of role we have an amazing person on our gpn snn team who does the gpn digital stuff and I think their role is more handling like the systems and designing different things and having more of an input on the it stuff and do you know like the risk assessments and stuff online I think it's more of a digital you know dealing with computers and that sort of thing that sort of role also I know there's a lot of stuff coming up as well because of lockdown and the pandemic and everything so everything is going more online and doing webinars and things like that so I think their role is doing more of that stuff at the minute and how to work our ways around it and doing video consultations and things like that so yeah it is a really exciting amazing role at the minute I think so naturally I have been thinking about my future and where I would like to go and I've been seeing these amazing posts for these lead nurses like regional lead nurses and things like that and I've been looking at the qualifications that that sort of role would have to have and they've all said they all want a master's or further degree like add-on things I am thinking ahead now and I'm starting to think okay what can I do next to sort of get a lead role in the area I want to work in however it's not all about qualifications there are some amazing roles out there as well that you don't need the extra masters or public health masters or anything like that so just to have a look have a really good search online and get as much information as possible and what sort of things that you would need just to set yourself up and get those stepping stones in place to where you want to be and lie so that is it from me I think I've covered a lot of things if I've missed anything out I'm really sorry this list is not limited to at all GP and the progression and different things that you can do is just so wide it's absolutely amazing but my biggest advice is just have a research have a look around and think about where you want to be and how to get there and if this is something you want to do if you don't want to do that sort of thing that's okay too I mean general practice nursing is an amazing amazing career it's in itself so yeah don't be too pressured if you don't want to do that sort of thing but I just wanted to show overall the amazing progression that you can do if that's for you