As any new practice manager will soon discover, life is ruled by passwords. And obtaining a whole load of passwords to start working in a surgery can take a considerable amount of time. It’s not a five-minute job. Another problem is working remotely – say, from home – as many of the sites you might…

For practice managers, one of the biggest headaches is staffing. Recruiting new staff, retaining existing people, managing salary (and pension) costs and generally ensuring a practice has the right balance of personnel is tough. Then there’s the CQC’s safe staffing agenda to worry about. According to the CQC, Safe, effective staffing is about “having enough…

A new package of services can be offered in GP surgeries in England to help “hidden”, unpaid young carers, it has been announced. NHS England has published proposals for GP practices, including priority appointments for carers, home visits, additional mental health checks, and ‘double appointments’ for the carer and those they provide care for. It…

Apart from wondering whether you should have taken on the job in the first place, what other factors should you consider on commencing your new role? This checklist is intended to help you through the quagmire of challenges you might face! Contract of employment: Have you received a formal, written job offer along with detailed…

Recent media headlines have stated: “Over 15 million GP appointments missed per year!” “This costs the NHS £216 million per year”, followed by “the equivalent of employing over 2,000 new GPs!” The problem is, DNAs are a very sticky subject. Okay, perhaps not quite as polarising as the never-ending Brexit debate, but trust me when…

I think I’ve come up with a great idea – a theme park based on a doctor’s surgery. I’d call the theme park ‘Bizzy Land’. In Bizzy Land, everyone is… busy. Get it? In Bizzy Land, there’s space for a thousand people in the park, but two thousand people try to get in every day.…

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…