Practice nurses must ‘speak more openly’ about their value

Nurses working in general practice have been encouraged to ‘speak more openly’ about their worth and value.

University of York research fellow and registered nurse Dr Helen Anderson today presented her research into the cultural and structural issues impacting the retention of general practice nurses (GPNs) during the Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing (QICN) Annual Conference.

The research, carried out by fellow researcher Dr Joy Adamson and NHS England’s primary care nursing lead Louise Brady, uncovered a practice nursing workforce that felt ‘undervalued’ and ‘pushed out’.

The study, published earlier this year, interviewed 41 members of nursing teams working in, or who have worked in, general practice as well as nurse leaders linked to the sector.

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Findings saw GPNs warn of a ‘deprofessionalisation agenda’ against them as some practices favour ‘tick box’ care and other roles.

And researchers said there was a sense of ‘precarity’ around the role of the registered nurse in general practice.

While presenting the findings today, Dr Anderson was asked what GPNs could do to help raise awareness of their expertise and value.

She said it was about GPNs developing ‘self-worth’, sharing their value with others and ‘not being embarrassed’ to do so.

‘I think in practices, and this is most practices now, where there are more than one practice nurse – nurses really need to stick together and act collectively,’ said Dr Anderson.

She added: ‘I think nurses need to think differently themselves about their worth.

‘When I spoke to nurses, often things like the pay and terms and conditions were seen as quite embarrassing to talk about.’

Practice nurses had stressed that patients were the ‘most important’ and that they were ‘not really bothered’ about issues like poor pay because they do the job ‘because [they] love it’.

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‘But actually, valuing yourself and asking others to value – they’re not dirty words. It’s not a bad thing. We need to be proud of what we do,’ said Dr Anderson.

‘It’s really difficult because we are in a difficult time in general practice more broadly. But developing self-worth and believing in the value of nursing and reiterating that and not being embarrassed.

‘We’re often quite shy about what we’ do. We’re educated professionals with lots of postgraduate qualifications, with lots of skills, lots of knowledge, and we kind of don’t like to shout about that, we find it a bit embarrassing, and we need to speak more openly about that.’

Her comments come amid the running of Nursing in Practice’s How Nurses Count campaign, which aims to highlight the true value of GPNs by demonstrating their leadership, innovation and influence.

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Dr Anderson recently reflected on this research – which also demonstrated the strengths of nurse role and benefits to patients – as part of our How Nurses Count article series.

This week’s QICN conference has also heard concerns about nurses leaving general practice within their first year, as well as an update on conversations around the need for a national GPN school.

Separately, learning disability nurse and care director at Catalyst Group Care Ashleigh Fox used her speech at the conference to encourage nurses to speak out against poor care even when ‘silence is the easier option’.