 Would you like to work as a nurse here in the UK? Are you registered for the new NMC OSCE exam but don't know where to start? The new NMC OSCE features 10 stations, including the four APIE stations, plus two pairs of skills, plus two brand new stations testing your values, behaviors and knowledge of evidence-based practice. Nurses, we can't wait to be there by your side as you prepare for the brand new NMC OSCE. You know what to do? Take the first step. Call 0203 637 6702. That's 0203 637 6702 today. Hi everybody, welcome back to another vlog. So today's vlog is all about what to prepare before your placement in general practice. So I'm going to give you a big long list because as you know, you've been following my videos. General practice is so varied. There's so much to do and learn and see. So don't feel overwhelmed by this video. Just take what you need and do that. You don't have to do all of this because when you're out there, you're going to learn it all anywhere. You're going to make your notes. You're going to learn as you go with your mentor. So no pressure. Please don't get overwhelmed. But this is just the top things that I think might help you to prepare for your placement. So firstly, in no particular order, this is just a random list. Top on my head. Everything I can think of. So firstly, if you go on to eLearning for healthcare, there is a whole eLearning package there. It's free for all. You just need to register with your email address and things like that to log into it. But there's a whole package on there dedicated to student nurses going on to their GP placement. It has everything. When you open it up, you're going to be so overwhelmed because there is ounces and ounces of eLearning that you can do to help you prepare. You don't need to do this. You don't need to do every single thing. But just pick the ones that you think, oh, actually, I need to know a bit more about that or let me just have a look at this. Just pick the ones that you're really interested in. Don't just pick any old thing thinking, oh, God, I need all of this because you're going to bore yourself to death. It's going to be really overwhelming and it's just going to be too much information. So just pick the ones that you really want to know more about and go from there. And I'm going to put the links. All the links are going to be below to help you guys out. But I need to try and find the link actually for eLearning for healthcare because if you just Google it, it doesn't come up. And I really struggle to find it afterwards, but I have saved the link onto my desktop. So I'm going to add the link here for everybody to go and have a look at. Next up, nice guidelines. Of course, it's always going to be nice guidelines. It's what we're taught at university, evidence-based research, all that jazz. Always follow your nice guidelines because that is your evidence-based best practice. So yes, have a look at, again, links below. Have a look at things like long-term conditions on nice guidelines, things like asthma control, diabetes, things like hypertension. Mainly go for hypertension because if you're a student, they might set you up a little clinic to do blood pressures and things like that. Things that you can do and you're competent to do. So have a look at things like the hypertension guidelines and where to go and how you should be doing that and how you should be treating that and things like home blood pressure readings and things like that. Have a look at that because that'd be really, really useful just to help you get started. So depending on which clinic you work at, some clinics do a lot of wound care. I know the last couple of clinics that I worked at, they had wounds all day every day. So maybe just brush up on wound management as well. Have a look at, I've said this before in a previous video, but in the BNF, if you've got a physical BNF, there's a whole page dedicated to wound management. Actually, I have my BNF. Let me show you. I have my BNF. This is an old one I got from my old workplace because they got all the new BNFs. So they let me have one when I was a student nurse. I also went to the pharmacy and any pharmacy will give you their old BNFs if they have them spare. Go into a pharmacy, tell them you're a student nurse, ask them if they have any old BNFs that you can have and they might just give you some for free. Don't pay for this. So anyway, BNF page 1061 might be a different page in the new BNFs because this is a very old one from March 2015. So yeah, don't worry about that. But this is wound management and it has got everything. The one thing that I use the most is this table. This table is brilliant. It's got a table at the back. So have a look in your BNF, whichever version you have. There's a whole table to say what type of dressings you should be using for something that's got low exodate, medium exodate, moderate, heavy. If it's granulating, if it's infected, if it's sluffy, it's got all the dressings there that you should be using. And then following that, it's got all the different types of dressings and the prices and stuff like that. So as nurses, you have to weigh up benefits and cost and everything, you know. But if something's going to be expensive to buy in for the patient, but at the end of the day it's going to save money because they're not going to be coming into clinic and they're going to be healing faster, then you can just avoid it. So yeah, so BNF guys for your wound dressings, best thing ever. If you've got the app, I think you can get it on the app as well. If not, if you have a look, have a Google, BNF wound dressings, have a Google, it's all online as well. You don't need the physical book for this. Everything's online. Everything's on your app now, you know. Also, there's different wound care formularies as well. So I will put some links below for different formularies. Why do I feel like I'm saying that wrong? I can't speak, you know this. But I'm going to put them all below anyway. I'll put all the links below, different wound guides, things like that for you just to help you out. There is another book as well that I had that was really, really good. Active Heal, Active Heal, something like that. I'm going to put the link again below. But if you go onto their website, they'll send you like a free guide and that's what I got and that's really, really helpful as well. Some other things you can look up are things like baby immunizations. If you've never done that before, I know I hadn't done that before. So I had to have all the separate training and things like that. But just have a look at the schedule. Just literally just have a look at the schedule. You don't need to go into depth with it and each one and things like that. But just have a look at the schedule. If you just Google baby immunizations, vaccine schedule, UK, it comes up with the government table with all the things that they should have in when they should have it and things like that. I will put the links below again for you to have a look at. But that could be a good one as well because if you're doing baby clinics with your practice nurse, it would just be good to have a rough idea on what goes on and what happens. But please prepare yourself mentally for this clinic. This is the biggest thing I think for me because when I was a student nurse and I did my first baby clinic, my tears, my tears, my eyes were filling up with tears because it was so sad. I still hate baby clinics, let me tell you. It makes me so emotional. I'm not a fan of injecting little babies. It terrifies me to death. I have all of my guidelines up ready for when that patient comes in because I don't want to be doing anything wrong to a baby. It's bad enough if it's an adult, but when you've got such a small child, if something goes wrong, that is going to be just 20 times worse, I think. Nothing should ever go wrong anyway in healthcare, let me tell you. But mistakes happen. We all do little slip-ups sometimes. I've had mistakes before in the past. So yeah, so it's really good just to prepare yourself mentally because it can be very emotional. The parents can get very emotional as well and upset because their babies cry in and things. So just make sure you're ready for that moment because it's not nice. And yeah, you do kind of... It sounds horrible, that does. You do kind of get used to it in a way, but it will still break your heart every single time. Some little things that you could prepare if you really wanted to is some things that go on in the background of general practice. So how is general practice run? So basically, there's things like the Quality Outcomes Framework. So have a look at QUOF, Q-O-F for GP, just if you Google it, links below as always. That's just how GPs are run, how they're funded, how they have to meet targets for the government, for the NHS. So things like your asthma, your COPD, cervical screening, different cancer screenings. Things like that are all targets that they have to meet. They have to be on target for those in managing population. I don't know. I don't think that's the right word. Prevention, prevention, because we want to prevent, we want to keep people well. So there's targets there to help you towards that. I'm going to put the links below, have a look because I'm really bad at explaining that. So I think what I'll do just to summarise, because it's going to be hours long this video, if I go through every single thing. What I'll do is run through a list, very quickly, a list of everything a general practice nurse does. A list is not limited to, you know, different practices do different things. So I'll run through a list of everything that a general practice nurse does so that you can have a look around these things if there's something you want to know more about. Have a look around, have a look into it and think of anything that you want to know more about. You can have a Google, have a little research, but hopefully this video is going to just give you the basic sort of things that you can have a little look up. So you look a bit prepared when you show up to placement and they ask, oh, what have you prepared for placement? Hopefully it's going to help you. Here we go. Are you ready? Asthma, COPD, diabetes, hypertension, stroke reviews, mental health reviews, rheumatoid arthritis reviews, sexual health contraception, wound management, clip removals, stitch removals, a whole variety of injections. So things like B12, hormone injections, contraception, depo injections, the baby vaccines, the flu vaccines, the COVID vaccines, now the COVID boosters as well, things like ECGs as well, or sometimes you will get a patient just rock up to reception, so the acute side of things that they literally can't breathe, they're struggling, or they've got severe chest pain, they can't get through on one, on one, I don't know. Sometimes they'll rock up at reception or they're just falling out or over outside and they need a wound dressing urgently and it's bleeding out or something. That does happen as well. Things like phlebotomy, so you'll be doing a variety of blood tests as well. It's a vehicle screening, which I love as well. Another little topic that I'm really passionate about recently is transgender healthcare. And the reason why I'm passionate about this recently is because when I first became a GP-ness, I didn't think of that side of healthcare and it wasn't until I was sat in front of a transgender patient there for the hormone injection, I was like, I don't know why I'm giving this, I don't know what it's doing to the body, I don't know this, I don't know that. So I started doing some research and digging into it. I started researching training as well, there was no training, I didn't feel particularly competent in it so I've been doing a lot of my own research and the more research I do, I've been finding people as well, transgender people, and getting information from them themselves and their experiences within healthcare. And it's something that the more I dig, the more shocked I am actually at the... I want to say it's discrimination, I'm going to say it, the discrimination that happens in healthcare against this group of people is shocking. It shouldn't be happening and the more I dig, the more I find, the more wrong it is and it's not okay. So I'm really passionate about that so please think about that side of things as well when you're out there on placement. Think about how you would treat that sort of person, treating them with dignity, respect, listen to your patient, use their preferred pronouns as well. If they're telling you they want to be called Mary, John, he, she, they, all different types of pronouns, there's hundreds of different pronouns for people. Please use them, please respect them and do not ever judge a person for who they are. Slightly off topic, I am going to be creating a transgender healthcare webinar. I'm just waiting for some dates to schedule it in. I'm going to be doing probably evenings, seven o'clock maybe in the evenings to hopefully raise awareness and show the different terminology and things like that and the things that go on in transgender healthcare out there and I hope it helps. So look out for that. I will post a vlog on it as well to let you all know when it's coming up. So have a look and I'll be posting it on my social media and stuff like that as well. So yeah, please join and yeah, just hopefully it'll make a difference. You might also do things like BMI, pill checks, things like that. So people come in for various things. So things like their blood pressure, height, weight, sometimes ECGs as well, especially if they've been referred to different clinics. Oh, sorry, the sun has just... The sun has decided to pop out and create this space. I'm going to have to stand here holding the curtain. I'm so sorry. This is what happens when a vlog, it just goes all wrong. But I'm going to show you the troubles that I have to go through sometimes. Anyway, what was I saying? Yes, so sometimes you'll get patients coming in that need all of that doing for different referrals as well. So for example, if someone needs to go to the new COVID clinic, so the long COVID clinics, they will expect ECGs and bloods and height, weight, blood pressure, things like that all done for them to go there. Other things like the eating disorder clinics, mental health clinics, things like that will all want all these little things doing. So you might get patients come in for those sort of things as well. Now I've lost track of where I am and what I was saying. I'm so sorry. So yes, the list is endless for general practice nurses basically. And I think something that might help you as well going into a placement is write down what you want to learn. So look through your placement documents. Think about all of the competencies as well that you need to get signed off. Think of anything that you think, oh, actually I need to do more of that. I need to get more comfortable with that. I need to get more competent with that. Actually I've never done that before. I wonder if I could do it here. Make a list of things you really want to learn, things that you really want to do, things that you need to get signed off. Make that list for your mentor. So then when you have that first interview with your mentor, you can say, oh, I really want to do this and this. Could you help me do it? And then that's just going to set up your placement really nicely and hopefully get you signed off on these skills that you need. I know a lot of my competencies evolved around where you have to do the four different fields of nursing. So learning disabilities, mental health, adults, children, pregnant people as well. And I got all that signed off like in the first two weeks of my general practice placement because they saw everything, so it was really, really good. So just think about those sort of things and any weaknesses as well that you have. If you recognize, actually, I'm not very good at this particular area. There's so much that I'm really bad at. Let me tell you. But if you go in with that, then your mentor can hopefully help you along with that and help you gain those skills and gain competence as well. I think that's just a really good idea just to set you up for the rest of your placement. So I think I've spoken enough about what to prepare for placement. If there's anything you want to know more about, anything I haven't covered, anything, oh, yeah, maybe this would be good for us. Drop a comment below and I'll do you a little video extra stuff for you. But I hope that helps. Someone requested this video. Oh, I forgot to say sorry. Thank you so much for the person that requested this video. It's a really good idea. And yeah, you know I love just sharing everything. So yeah, so thank you so much. Anyone's got any requests, please drop a comment. I will get back to you. I will do a video at some point about it and all the links below. Don't forget the links are below. Have a look at the links. And yeah, have a great day, everyone.