Who are Aspire PCN?
Aspire PCN brings together five local GP practices: Aspley Medical Centre | Bilborough Medical Centre | Broad Oak Medical Practice | Melbourne Park Medical Centre and St Luke’s Surgery. We provide , patient-centred care.
As a Primary Care Network, our role is to enhance the services offered by individual practices through collaborative working, ensuring patients benefit from a wider range of healthcare professionals and services. We focus on the needs of our community, working with partner organisations to deliver high-quality, accessible care.
Clinical Pharmacist
Clinical Pharmacists work in primary care as part of a multidisciplinary team in a patient facing role. They clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas. They will be prescribers, or if not, can complete an independent prescribing qualification following completion of the 18-month Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE) pathway.
They work with and alongside the general practice team, taking responsibility for patients with chronic diseases and undertaking clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy, especially for the elderly, people in care homes and those with multiple comorbidities.
Social prescribing link workers
Social prescribing link workers help people focus on what matters to them as identified in their care and support plan. They connect people to community groups and agencies for practical and emotional support. Link workers typically work with people over six to 12 contacts (including phone calls and meetings) over a three-month period with a typical caseload of up to 250 people, depending on the complexity of people’s needs.
Health and wellbeing coaches
Health and wellbeing coaches will predominately use health coaching skills to support people to develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become active participants in their care so that they can reach their own health and wellbeing goals. They may also provide access to self-management education, peer support and social prescribing.
Health and wellbeing coaches will support people to self-identify and manage existing issues. This approach is based on using strong communication and negotiation skills and supports personal choice and positive risk taking. They will work alongside people to coach and motivate them through multiple sessions, supporting them to identify their needs, set goals, and help them to implement their personalised health and care plan.
Physician Associates (PAs)
Are healthcare professionals, with a generalist clinical education, who work alongside GPs to provide care as part of the multidisciplinary team. They provide care for the presenting patient from initial history taking and clinical assessment through to diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation. Whilst physician associates currently do not have prescribing rights prescribe, they can prepare prescriptions for GPs to sign. Apprentice physician associates undertaking approved training can be employed by PCNs under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme from April 2023.
Dietitians
Dietitians diagnose and treat diet and nutritional problems, both at an individual patient and wider public health level. Working in a variety of settings with patients of all ages, dietitians support changes to food intake to address diabetes, food allergies, coeliac disease, and metabolic diseases. Dietitians also translate public health and scientific research on food, health, and disease into practical guidance to enable people to make appropriate lifestyle and food choices.
First contact physiotherapists
First contact practitioner physiotherapists are qualified autonomous clinical practitioners who can assess, diagnose, treat, and manage musculoskeletal problems and undifferentiated conditions. Where appropriate, they are also able to discharge a person without a medical referral. First contact practitioner physiotherapists working in this role can be accessed directly by patients, or via referral from other members of staff. They can establish a rapid and accurate diagnosis and management plan to streamline pathways of care.
Mental health practitioners support adults whose needs cannot be met by local talking therapies, but who may not need ongoing care from secondary mental health services. The practitioner can be taken on by a wide range of clinical and non-clinical roles with mental health expertise, such as a community psychiatric nurse, clinical psychologist, mental health occupational therapist or a peer support worker.
Mental health practitioners for children and young people can be developed to meet a wide range of needs, from early identification and intervention in primary care, to more targeted or intensive support and interventions as part of a joined-up approach with children and young people’s community mental health services. The exact scope of the role and job description should be agreed between the PCN and the NHS trust but could include children wellbeing practitioners, community mental health nurse, and cognitive behavioural and family therapists.
As this is part of the wider transformation and expansion of community mental health services, the practitioner will be employed by the secondary mental health provider and will operate as a fully embedded member of the PCN multidisciplinary team. They will act as bridge between primary care and secondary mental health services and can facilitate onward referral to a range of services to meet patients’ needs.