Primary Health Care Team Flashcards
What makes up the traditional PHCT?
- GP Partners
- GP assistants and other salaried doctors
- GP registrars
- Practice nurses
- Practice managers
- Receptionists
- Community Nurses
- Midwives
- Health visitors
- Nurse practitioners
What is a GP?
First point of contact for most patients.
Provide a complete spectrum of care within the local community: dealing with problems that often combine physical, psychological and social components.
They increasingly work in teams with other professions, helping patients to take responsibility for their own health.
How are GPs employed?
Most GPs are independent contractors to the NHS.
This independence means that in most, cases they are responsible for providing adequate premises from which to practice and for employing their own staff
What are practive nurses?
General practice nurses work in GP surgeries as part of the PHCT which might include doctors, pharmacists and dietitians.
In larger practices they might be one of severeal practice nurses sharing duties and responsibilities while in others, they might be working on theur own, taking on many roles.
General practice nurses may also have direct supervision of healthcare assistants at the practice
What kind of tasks do practice nurses commonly do?
- Obtaining blood samples
- ECGs
- Minor and complex wound management including leg ulcers
- Travel health advice and vaccinations
- Child immunisations and advice
- Family planning and women’s health including cervical smears
- Men’s health screening
- Sexual health services
- Smoking cessation
What is a district nurse?
They visit people in their own homes or in residential care homes, providing increasingly complex care for patients and supporting family members.
Also have a teaching and support role, working with patients to enable them to care for themselves or with family members teaching them how to give care to their relatives.
They are also accountable for their own patient caseloads.
How do the role of district nurses effect hospital admissions?
District nurses play a role in keeping hospital admissions and readmissions to a minimun and ensuring thet patients can return to their own homes as soon as possible.
They assess the healthcare needs of patients and families, monitor the quality of care they’re ceveiving and are professionally accountable for delivery of care
What are midwives?
Provide care during all stages of pregnancy, labour and the early postnatal period.
Where do midwives work?
Many midwives now work in the community, providing services in women’s homes, local clinical, children’s centres and GP surgeries.
There is the option to be hospital based, where there are opportunities for midwives to work on antenatal, labour and postnatal wards and neonatal units.
What so health visitors do?
Lead and deliver child and family health services (pregnancy through to 5 years)
Provide ongoing additional services for vulnerable children and families.
Contribute to multidisciplinary services in safeguarding and protecting children
How do health visitors help new parents?
Work with all paremts to assess the support they need and develop appropriate programs to help give the child the best possible start in life.
What are some of the common tasks health visitors carry out?
Offering parenting support and advice on family health and inor illnesses.
New birth visits which include advice on feeding, weaning and dental health
Physical and developmental checks
Providing families with specific support on subjects such as post natal depression
How do health visitors provide ongoing additional services for vulnerable children and families?
Being skilled at identifying vulnerable families enables parents to express their needs and decide on the support they receive:
- Referring families to specialists, such as speech and language therapists
- Arranging access to support groups
- Organising practial support- for example working with a nursery nurse on the importance of play
How do health visitors contribute to multidisciplinary services in safeguarding and protecting children?
Trained in recognising the risk factors, triggers for concern, and signs of abuse and neglect in children.
Often first to recognise whether the risk of harm to a child has increased to a point where actions need to be taken to protect them.
They’ll also maintain contact with families while formal safeguarding arrangements are in place ensuring families recieve the best possible support during this time.
As they are involved in every stage of the child protection process, including serious case reviews, they are sometimes called upon to appear in court to explain the action taken
What are Macmillan Nurses?
Specialise in cancer and palliative care, providing support and information to people with cancer and their families, friends and carers, from the point of diagnosis onwards
What do Macmillan Nurses offer?
- Specialised pain and symptom control
- Emotional support both for the patient and their family or carer.
- Care in a variety of settings (hospital (inpatient and outpatient), at home or from a local clinic)
- Information about cancer treatments and side effects
- ADvice to other members of the caring team, for example district nurses and Marie Curie nurses
- Co-ordinated care between hospital and the patients home
- Advice on other forms of support, including financial help
What comes under allied health professionals?
- Physiotherapy
- Dietetics
- Podiatry
- Pharmacy
- Counselling
What is a pharmacist?
Expert in medicines and their use.
They advise medical and nursing staff on the selection and appropraite use of medicines.
They provide information to patients on how to manage their medicines to ensure optimal treatment
Pharmacists are able to undertake additional training in order to allow them to prescribe medicines for specific conditions.
Where do pharmacists work?
The majority practice in hospital pharmacy, community pharmacy or in primary care pharmacy, working to ensure that patients get the maximum benefit from their medicines
What are Dietetics?
Interperate and communicate nutrition science to enable people to make informed and practical shoices about food and lifestyle in health and disease.
What is included in the responsibilities of a dietitian?
Working with people with special dietary needs
Informing the general public about nutrition
Offering unbiased advice
Evaluating and improving treatments
Educating patients/clients, other healthcare professionals and community groups
What are physiotherapists?
Help and treat people with physical problems caused by illness, accident or ageing.
They see human movement as central to the health and well-being of individuals and identify and maximise movement through health promotion, preventive healthcare, treatment and rehabilitation.
Core skills include manual therapy, therapeutic exercise and the application of electro-physical modalities.
They also have an apreciation of psychological, cultural and social factors influencing their clients
What is occupational therapy?
The assessment and treatment of physical and psychiatric conditions using specific activity to prevent disability and promote independent function in all aspects of daily life.
Occupational therapists work with people of all ages to help them overcome the effects of disability caused by physical or psychological illness, aging or accident
What areas OT provide help with?
Physical rehabilitation Mental health services Learning disabilities Primary care Paediatrics Environmental adaptation Care management Equipment for daily living
