Protect Yourself – Your Qualification is your Biggest Asset

Tuesday was a big day, months of work and negotiation led to the first Minor Ailments course being delivered. The topics where wide ranging and the audience thankfully very engaging. There was a general concern from the beginning of the day about ‘running a service’ as a lot of the pharmacists there were new to the role of seeing patients for minor ailments.

Here are my 5 tips to consider as you start to see minor ailments!

 

Protect Yourself: Indemnity

The first thing to check is to make sure you have the correct indemnity cover. I would always make sure that you have your own with a recognised provider. DO NOT leave this to your employer to organise.  Make sure that whoever you are getting your indemnity with know EXACTLY what you are doing. Seeing minor ailments will naturally bring around more risk and so don’t be surprised if the cost goes up.

 

Who are you going to call? In house

I have been a qualified doctor for over 10 years, and I still ask questions, every day, to anyone who is willing to answer. You are never going to know everything and you will have patients that leave you clueless.

Think who is looking out for you. Yes, you may be able to work ‘independently’ but it is useful to have an agreement in practice of someone who can ask. In my practice we have two Nurse Practitioners who see most of the Minor Ailments and they know that the ‘duty doctor’ is there to answer any of their questions.

I would recommend making sure that if you are seeing patients and you are new to this that you have someone who is very experienced who is happy to help.

 

Communication is Key

It is estimated that a patient will retain anywhere between 20-40% of the information that you have given them. Due to this, if you are referring a patient on, or admitting them, make sure you give them some formal documentation. If you work on the same computer system, then it is easy, but take the time to write a summary of their complaint and also what question you are asking.

 

Don’t Emergency Department Dump

If you have seen a patient, unless there is a good reason (i.e. the hospital’s own protocols), make sure you refer directly to that speciality. It is unacceptable to send a patient who you know that needs to speak to a speciality directly there. I.e. the suspected appendicitis who needs to see a surgeon.

 

What are your protocols?

Protocols will help you not make mistakes. They allow for careful thought of making up a set of guidelines to try and mitigate this. This is especially true for when dealing with more at risk consultations (i.e. over the phone vs Face to Face) that will protect you in the long run.

Such examples that we had instigated:

>A patient who has seen a NP twice for the same problem will then be seen by a doctor on the next time.

>(During COVID) any patient who has been consulted twice over the phone for the same condition needs to be seen face to face

> Any patient with ongoing blood in urine needs to be seen by a doctor.

 

 

Finally

Know your team. Primary Care is a team sport, if you are not working in a supportive environment and not getting the support that you need, LEAVE. You are too valuable to work there. If you can’t leave, can you change the culture? Do you meet and talk? Is everyone locked in their rooms?

There is A LOT of good literature about this. For a good start, I would suggest reading ‘The Culture Code’ by Daniel Coyle.

Thank you again, and very best of luck for your clinics!

 

See you on the next course,

Dr Dave Hindmarsh
Portfolio General Practitioner, GP Partner, GP Trainer and HYMS Associate Director of Primary Care