Volunteers. Could they help your practice? And what about work experience placements? Could the extra pair of hands help ease your workload?

While some practice managers may dismiss both as ‘taking more time than they save’, for many practices up and down the country they are a great way to ease the pressure of work most of us experience these days.

One practice manager in Leeds told us: “We wouldn’t be without our volunteers now and people looking for work experience can be useful too. In fact, we haven’t looked back since we reached out to the community for support.”

The practice started utilising the skills of a work experience student back in 2011 when a member of staff’s niece came in to work for a couple of weeks. “Firstly, it was great to have an enthusiastic, youthful presence in the building and, secondly, they brought fresh eyes and new skills that were really useful,” the practice manager told us. “These included ideas for poster designs, ways we could automate our printer set-up so that we weren’t fiddling around with headed notepaper and how to reach out to younger people. That got us thinking about what else we could do to help our patients and who else had skills we could utilise. We then reached out to our PPG and ended up with a small team of volunteers who would help us out a few hours a week by talking to patients, sharing their experiences of living with illnesses, writing newsletters and generally helping around the practice.”

Health champions

Soon after the practice started utilising volunteers, a new scheme – Altogether Better – was launched to look into this exact topic and build a network of ‘practice health champions’. These are people who voluntarily give their time to work with the staff in their local GP practice or surgery to find new ways to improve the services that the practice offers, and to help to meet the health needs of patients and the wider community.

In addition to individuals using their life experience, understanding and position to influence their friends, families and work colleagues to lead healthier lives – practice champions also use their passion and understanding of the local community to enrich decision making in GP practices through the development of a greater understanding of local need; champions develop new groups to support the health and wellbeing of the local community and also develop new skills and experiences which support their own personal development and growth.

Benefits

The connection between health champions and their general practice provides substantial benefits for both practice and champions.

Champions, as they have come to be recognised as members of the general practice team, gain a greater understanding of what the formal health and social care system has to offer, along with a more effective way of connecting people with needs into this system. The connection with general practice also strengthens their status as community leaders, increasing their effectiveness in their community.

For the practice, champions provide a link into their community and much greater knowledge of the resources available in it. The champions’ groups provide a new resource. And many of the practice health champions are keen to work at the interface between the practice and the community, helping patients to make the best use of the services provided both by the practice and by the wider health and social care system.

Champions work on issues that they feel passionate about and that are a priority to their practice. Examples include explaining the roles of the various medical and nursing staff so patients can recognise for themselves whom it is most appropriate to see; and promoting practice campaigns such as flu immunisations.

According to Altogether Better – www.altogetherbetter.org.uk – one practice explained to its group of champions that Asian women were not attending for cervical smears. One of the champions, a young woman, went to her imam who issued a fatwa explaining the need to have the test, which the practice now include with their invitation letters for smears.

This initiative offers a real opportunity to improve the quality of health care and reduce the workload in general practice; and ultimately to the development of citizen-led self-management groups and citizen involvement in commissioning.

Altogether Better has also tested a community health champion model in GP surgeries in Sheffield and Bradford. This initiative is enabling people to improve self-management of their diabetes and make positive behavioural changes, and the evidence suggests it will lead to a reduction in inappropriate demand for services, a reduction in avoidable and costly emergency admissions, and a reduction in the rate and number of early onset diabetic complications.

Dr Shahid Ali, a Bradford-based GP and National Clinical Lead, Commissioning Intelligence, said: “The value of the diabetes project has been that patients develop a greater understanding of their condition and are more able to navigate the system, enabling them to look after themselves better.”

While patient health champions might not be right for every practice, it does show the potential of utilising volunteers. Whether it’s a work experience-seeking student brought in for a couple of weeks, a couple of friendly patients willing to lend their services or a more formal volunteering initiative, the benefits are there. What could they do for you?

Returning to the practice in Leeds, staff have high hopes of obtaining an outstanding CQC rating for its work in the community. And as for that work experience student… she now works at the practice full-time as a receptionist.

Have you used volunteers or work experience placements in your practice? Did it work or was it a more hassle than it was worth? Let us know by commenting below or take it to the Practice Index Forum.

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