 Hi everyone, so I've got my t-shirt on which can only mean one thing. I'm here to talk to you all about general practice nursing. Now today in particular I'm here to tell you about the actual role of the general practice nurse and actually how amazing they are and how much they do because there's a little bit of a myth going around that general practice nursing is somewhere to retire to and it's somewhere seen as a more relaxed and de-skilled place. So I'm here to completely erase that myth and go through the roles of the general practice nurse and how amazing they are. So firstly I just want to point out that every practice is different and every nurse will work in a completely different way and one practice area that you might go to might be completely different run to another practice area. So just bear in mind that all of these roles and responsibilities are not limited to some do more, some do less, some do different things, some do it in various ways. So it just depends on what practice you're at and what the nurses responsibilities are there. But I'm just going to talk about my experience working alongside my mentor who is a general practice nurse and all of the amazing things that she did. So the role of the general practice nurse includes and not limited to ECGs, hypertension clinics, diabetic clinics, asthma clinics, baby immunizations, travel vaccines, sexual health and family planning, cervical cytology, new patient health checks and registration. A general practice nurse may also assist with minor surgery alongside the doctor so that could be toenail removals, steroid injections into the joints, could be mole removals, wall removals, so many things. But again that depends on what area you go to and if minor surgery is held at that particular surgery. You'll be given out flu vaccines and encouraging patients to take those every winter. You might be doing blood testing and results, leg ulcers and wound management. You'll also be doing full screening and full prevention with patients. You'll be communicating with a variety of different patients with mental health needs, learning disabilities. You'll be with children, adults, elderly, from pregnancy all the way to end of life patients. You are going to see a whole variety of patients and it's about managing those patients individually and you're looking at a patient truly holistically so you're going to be looking into their social, their mental health, their physical, their emotional, their religion, everything that you can think of gets completely thrown in at general practice. It's just amazing. You might also be calling patients, doing telephone consultations, just the list is just never ending in general practice. So for anyone that thinks that general practice is dull and boring please think again because it's a whole new world out there. It's amazing and general practice nurses have these special set of skills that they use in that area and it's just amazing. It's fantastic to see and they're just little superheroes of the world. Also out in general practice you're going to be working alongside 101 different people. You're going to have consultants, you're going to have doctors, you're going to have surgeons that you liaise with, you're going to have hospitals, you're going to have paramedics, you're going to have your philobotomist, your pharmacist, you've got your reception team, also the mental health team, social services, social workers, safeguarding teams, you're going to have so many people that you liaise with. It's just amazing to even think about and my personal love of general practice nursing is the fact that no two days are ever the same. One day you'll be dealing with such and such a patient, the next day will be completely different, you'll have a completely different set of patients, completely different things to do, so one day you might be dealing with a lot of wounds, a lot of leg ulcers, the next day you could be dealing with asthmatic patients teaching them how to do a peak flow, how to use their inhalers properly. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of health promotion in general practice and health prevention and that's my main, main love about general practice nursing and that's what would drawn me into it because I would rather be that person that health promotes and does the health prevention to prevent that admission to hospital. That's what I really, really love most about general practice and I love that you're seeing the patient in a truly holistic way and even though you've only got 15 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes with the patient, you feel like you can have that proper real one-to-one session with that patient and that's just the best thing about general practice nursing. I love having that time, even though it's limited, you feel like you've got a lot more time to spend on that patient in such a holistic, amazing way. And lastly, just a little reminder, no matter what area of nursing you are, you could be child, mental health, adult, you could be newly qualified, please, please, please, if you don't take anything away from this vlog, remember that you can apply to be a general practice nurse. It doesn't matter what field of nursing you're in, it doesn't matter if you're just newly qualified, you can apply to be a general practice today. Because there's a reason why general practice nurses out there are all retiring right now because they've lived a long, healthy, happy career within general practice and they've been there for years and they love it and there's got to be a reason to it because it's an amazing career path. So please look into it, have a look at the details like I've said and see if this is the career for you. And let me know in the comments below if any of those roles or responsibilities have actually shopped you or if you realised how much general practice nurses do. If you're already working in general practice, let me know what your area does. If I've missed anything out, please let me know. Put it in the comments so everybody can see. That's it from me. Thank you again for watching and I'll see you all next time.