Improving access to appointments at Laurie Pike Health Centre

BackgroundRising demand makes it increasingly difficult for patients to access appointments. Laurie Pike Health Centre (LPHC) operates a predominantly same-day booking policy in order to manage appointment requests from its 18 000 patients. We sought to quantify the number of requests, in order to estimate the unmet demand.Aim1) To estimate the met and unmet demand for same-day appointments; 2) To assess how capacity for same-day appointments compares to demand; 3) To analyse how well LPHC is utilising its available appointment slots.MethodWe created a data collection tool to count the total number of patient requests by type. We grouped types into four categories: 1) medical appointment requests; 2) sick notes and results requests; 3) other appointment requests (such as healthcare assistant, nurse); and 4) admin/other. Category-specific percentages were applied to call log data to estimate the number of appointment requests per category. Capacity was measured by counting the total number of same-day GP/advanced nurse practitioner (ANP) appointment slots. Consultation records for GP/ANP appointments were analysed to assess the appropriateness of the booking.ResultsEstimated average demand for same-day GP/ANP appointments was 222 per day. Average same-day capacity was 112 slots. After introducing pharmacist and video consultations, average capacity increased to 194 slots per day, a shortfall of 28 appointments. Consultation records indicated that 41% of GP/ANP appointments could have been seen by other practitioners; for example, musculoskeletal practitioners (14%).ConclusionGP/ANP appointments alone cannot meet patient demand but a diversified workforce might. Alongside this, efforts to improve care navigation may free up to 41% of GP/ANP appointment slots.

ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL CONTINUING EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES IN HEALTH CARE

Any health care specialist – physician, physician’s assistant,nurse, nurse’s aid, midwife and other professionals of this field have to improve their professional skills, therefore it is important to go on learning to acquire the latest medical ideas and topicalities in the speciality, to get new knowledge, skills and competences. Professional growth and compliance with the respective field are assessed by a certification commission of any association and a certificate awarded which allows to do work in a health care field. The awarded certificate to a health care specialist serves as acknowledgement to one’s knowledge, skills and competences. In order to ease the ways for a specialist to improve knowledge, skills and competences, various courses, seminars and conferences are organized. By participation in these events specialists are awarded continuing education points, which have to be summed up thus giving an opportunity to prolong the the term for the acquired certificate. Themes for continuing education programme are offered specifying particular fields of health care .It allows a specialist to choose those programmes which give a chance to ease the solution of the most topical problems in practice

Singing Along the Way to Becoming Baby-Friendly

In this column, two assistant nurse managers describe an innovative and fun strategy they developed and implemented at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York to assist the nursing staff in preparing for their Baby-Friendly auditors’ visit.

Active and Emotional Student Engagement: A Nationwide, Prospective, Longitudinal Study of Swedish Nursing Students

The researchers surveyed nursing students yearly during their three-year education, and examined active and emotional engagement. We examined the association of these properties with seven independent variables: higher educational institution, class size, age, gender, prior assistant nurse education, study experience and self-rated health. This longitudinal study included 1,334 students from 24 universities and university colleges in Sweden. Active engagement increased and emotional engagement decreased during the study years. Male students, older students and those with prior assistant nurse education had higher active engagement than other students. Older students, females, students with good self-rated health and those attending universities had higher emotional engagement. Study results suggest that higher educational institutions should pay more attention to students’ active and emotional engagement in learning situations, since this may increase the ability of the students to cope with stressful events during their education, giving them an extra resource on which they can draw.