 Hi everyone and welcome back to another vlog. So this vlog is all about common general practice nursing misconceptions. Here at number one, one of the biggest misconceptions is that you need previous experience or to be an experienced nurse to go into general practice and this just is not true. I myself was a newly qualified nurse and I went straight into general practice without any experience so please don't be afraid to just go for it. Not only that I also know a lot of other people, a lot of the GPN, SNN, ambassadors that I work with as well. Some of those people were newly qualified nurses and they've gone straight into general practice so just have a look around and get applying. Next up we have number two. This is one of the second I think most common misconceptions out there that general practice nursing is somewhere to retire to and I've had a lot of comments saying oh I might just get some experience on the ward and things like that and then go into it later on in life. Why? Why? If general practice is where you want to be just go for it and trust me you don't want to be retiring into general practice. I mean obviously you want a long happy career and then retire from that career in general practice you can do that. However it is hard work. People often say this because they think general practice nurses sit around drinking tea all day having a great time. I mean we do have a cup of tea every now and then and we do have a great time but it's not one of those lazy jobs that we sit around doing nothing. We are so busy we're up and down up and down. We've got so many patients a lot more patients that you get in a day on the wards. It is it is hectic in general practice nursing and not only that it's not just a fast pace but you're gonna get acute things through the door you're gonna see different ages so you have to adapt yourself to every single scenario that you walk into. You could have a baby in the morning for your immunizations then you could have a smear test then you can have an ECG for heart palpitations then you could have some injections to do then you could be called up to the flu vaccines or the COVID vaccines. It doesn't matter what your day consists of there will always be something either added extra to your day there'll be different variations throughout the day so it is busy and it is non-stop but it is the best career ever. So no it's not somewhere just to retire to and all of that brings me very very nicely on to the misconception number three. So this one is all about de-skilling why do people say this oh I'm gonna de-skill as a GP nurse because I won't be doing this and no I've never heard such nonsense in all my life. So I feel personally don't take offense anybody out there I feel personally that I have up-skilled definitely up-skilled in general practice nursing because I'm doing so much more than I've ever done when I was out on placements on the wards for example if you were on a orthopedic ward and that's where you want to specialise that's absolutely brilliant I loved my orthopedic placements however the set of skills you have on that ward is very very different to what you're going to be doing in general practice nursing and because general practice nursing is so varied you need many skills to be a general practice nurse it's not one particular set of skills for one speciality you're going to be having to adapt and adjust all the time so you need all of those skills the only things I will say that we don't really do is things like IVs we don't really do IVs in general practice nursing so if you want that particular skill then maybe go A&E or wards or wherever you want to do if you particularly want that particular clinical skill then go for it but general practice nursing is a whole new set of skills that are just amazing and definitely I know I'm not de-skilled. Misconception number four. People often think that to become a general practice nurse you need a whole load of extra qualifications so this is a 50-50 one so because of all the other things that I've already discussed about de-skilling or up-skilling and things like that you will have to do extra training to become a general practice nurse however you don't need those prior to going into general practice nursing it's something you very much train on the job to do so you will secure your job then you'll do the extra training to be able to do smears to be able to do baby immunizations to be able to give vaccines to be able to give steroid injections implants all those different sort of things that you might not be doing at the minute wherever you're working or as a student you will learn those skills on the job and they will either teach you on-site some GPs will put you through different training courses as and when through practice or you will go on to the fundamentals of primary care course or sometimes it's called the foundations of general practice nursing course it depends where you are in the world this is a dedicated course at university that you can go on but you need to be in a secure job first before you do that course because it runs alongside your work and you need a mentor at your work and you need to be putting these into practice as you learn them and get them signed off so they're the two kind of different ways of doing it so technically yes you will do extra qualifications and training as a general practice nurse but it's not something that you need specifically before training and in fact you probably couldn't do it before you get into that job because you're not gonna learn those skills unless you're in the job if that makes sense and my last misconception number five so a lot of people seem to think that general practice nursing is all about just seeing elderly people or you're just doing that same thing over and over again as a practice nurse but actually that is probably one of the biggest myths maybe I don't know and I know this was kind of what I thought as well before I ever went into general practice nurse so all of these myths actually that I'm telling you are things I thought before I even set foot into practice and it was only because as a student nurse that I got that placement in general practice and saw all of the amazing things that nurses did out there and how amazing it is and fell in love with it that is how I got to know it so this is why I'm doing these videos to try and get rid of these myths and make you think more about different options in nursing because you don't have to stick to that acute sector if you don't want to but anyway I'm diverting from this so no we don't just see old people so yes we will see old-aged people as well but we also see children we see babies we say pregnant people we are seeing a whole range of people and not just that but a whole ranges of fields of nursing so we also deal with mental health crises we deal with learning disabilities dementia all sorts of different fields of nursing all sorts of different ages so please don't think that general practice nursing is just for the older aged people because this is not true and the sort of things that we do do are like I've already discussed the baby humanizations we're doing smear tests on young people from 24 years and a half upwards we are doing things like contraception checks with younger people as well as older people we'll see younger people as well for things like their injections if they're on any vaccinations if they've got wounds for example I treated a two-year-old with a burn to the leg so don't think that you're just gonna be seeing the same ages and the same type of patients because that's absolutely the biggest myth I think as well as the rest but not only that as I've already discussed in this video that the days are so varied you will get one patient then a different patient then a completely different patient and no days are the same no sessions are the same no hour is the same in general practice nursing you are not stuck doing the same things because there are so many things you will cover as a general practice nurse and the day is just so fast and it's amazing so that is it from me that is all my misconceptions for general practice nursing if you can think of anything else or any question you would like to ask me drop a comment below and I'll try my best to answer as best as possible or direct you to the place where you need to be just have a little look and open your mind