Workforce has long been a challenge in the NHS.  Before the NHS, care was chargeable and a doctor’s advice was only sought if it was urgent or you could afford the fee. The advent of the NHS means that we’re now better able to manage long term conditions and help our patients with issues that…

If you were to ask ‘what is team development’, I wonder what responses you’d get? Would people focus on personal development, learning new skills or would they think of it as team-building and conjure up images of themselves on an obstacle course? What we’re really trying to achieve is the development of the team with…

In 2011 the compulsory retirement age of 65 was abolished in the UK, following the implementation of the Equality Act 2010. Age is listed as one of the ‘protected characteristics’ and it was deemed to be discriminatory to force a person to retire purely because they’d reached the age of 65. Nowadays employees can continue…

Developing the team: Physician Associate Success The idea of utilising physician associates to ease the chronic GP shortage has been floating around for a while now. It’s a topic we covered on the Practice Index blog in 2017 – you can find the article here – and there has been plenty of talk before and…

There have been a few forum threads recently about staff not getting on, ‘he-said-she-said’, treating each other unprofessionally and so on. As managers, how do we deal effectively with these situations, and is there anything we can do to prevent them from happening? So let’s get reactive before we get proactive… Sadly, you can’t sit…

(Time to read: 4 minutes) Long hours, demanding patients (and practice partners), exhaustion, the NHS… working in a GP practice can be a tough business – which highlights the need for a strong team ethos and plenty of positivity. Yet, all too often an overbearing sense of negativity, lack of engagement and dissatisfaction at work…