General Practice to gain from PRIMIS
blended learning approach

Southampton 2008

While PRIMIS gears up for an overhaul in the way it delivers training and support services, a trialled "blended learning" approach to GP2GP training has proved to be a success in Southampton.

Southampton City PCT facilitator, Tina Woodcock, believes the use of face-to-face tuition and online resources has been key to ensuring a smooth roll out of GP2GP electronic record transfer across her practices. Tina utilised the GP2GP online audio visual tool from PRIMIS - ‘Managing the GP2GP electronic health record transfer' - as a refresher, before cascading her knowledge to practice staff. But she firmly believes the opportunity to work face-to-face with her PRIMIS Learning Consultant, Nic Gowers, remains an essential element to her training.

She explained: "I am glad that PRIMIS will continue to provide face to face training alongside the e-learning material, as everybody will have different questions to ask, and will work at a different pace. It also means that I can devote an entire day to training in an environment where I will not be disturbed."

PRIMIS has already provided GP2GP training to 479 facilitators in 126 PCTs, while, according to the latest deployment statistics from NHS Connecting for Health, almost 5,000 practices are now actively operating GP2GP transfers.

Despite this early success (achieved despite only two clinical system providers currently offering GP2GP), Tina is determined to reinforce the importance of training all staff at every practice. By doing so she hopes to ensure that they fully understand how the system works and any implications it might have on their practice and patients. Practices had previously received clinical systems training from suppliers, but Tina believes they benefited greatly from being told the rationale behind the process, as part of PRIMIS training. Although she admits standards of implementation do vary, all practices that can implement GP2GP in her PCT (24 out of 36) have now done so. Tina explained: "GP2GP has an impact on all employees in general practice from the GP to administration staff. They all need to realise its impact on their work and the business process, as well as how the facilitator can support them during this change. "If practices stop using the system, it quickly becomes apparent how good it is. GP2GP is the way forward, and practices must plan for it."

Practice staff in Southampton City PCT who are not able to use the service, have said they would relish the opportunity to do so, particularly those that have a high transient population.

Wendy Fielder from the University Health Service in Southampton, has used the system to register 1600 patients so far. She said: "It was fantastic as we also had someone processing the incoming records through the workflow manager in EMIS. This meant that in some cases, by the time the patient saw the GP, even within half an hour of registering, their old records were here. We have found it enormously helpful with patient care having all the old consultations, etc. to hand and the patients are pretty impressed too!"

At the 2008 PRIMIS conference, Tina ran a workshop session which looked at the importance of providing training and support on GP2GP to practice staff. Tina's presentation "GP2GP: Supporting practices with the changes" can be found on the PRIMIS conference website at www.primis.nhs.uk/conference_2008/presentations.asp