Some 20,000 GPs were thought to be working as locums in 2016 (National Association of Salaried GPs). In 2016, there were 41,985 GPs in England working in 7,613 practices. The number of salaried GPs has increased by 400% in the last decade (British Medical Association). There are thought to be some 20,000 GPs working as…

“Everybody’s talkin’ and no one says a word” – John Lennon Communicating with members of your practice can send your temperature rising rapidly, particularly when you hear the words “Nobody told me”. As the number of people working in a practice increases, it becomes more and more difficult to make sure a message has been…

A GP practice manager is a solitary being, alone but a member of a brigade of over 9,000 managers scattered across the UK, working in large multi-premises practices and very small practices with one surgery and one doctor, in cities, towns and rural locations. The make-up of each practice is unique and although there are…

Current UK legislation awards, as a right, 28 days’ leave to all employed persons. These 28 leave days can include 8 days’ worth of bank holidays, which some might think reduces the leave entitlement to 20 days or four working weeks. Most GPs enjoy at least 30 days’ leave per annum, plus a week’s study…

A full-time (9 sessions per week) GP might offer 135 appointments per week  based on a 10-minute consultation. This is a personal view of why there are never enough appointments. Have you ever thought about how many appointments have been lost in your practice over the years? It’s quite complicated and for both new and…

As GP practices battle to provide an adequate number of face-to-face appointments, I was wondering if other forms of consultation are on the increase. I spotted recently a notice in my local surgery which declared that almost one third of consultations in July had been carried out on the telephone. This amounted to a remarkable…

By Robert Campbell “Audit is the process of critically and systematically assessing our own professional activities with a commitment to improving personal performance and ultimately the quality and/or cost-effectiveness of patient care” Although I’d normally avoid clinical audits like the plague, there are ways in which practice managers and their staff can help doctors carry…