Developing Primary Care Champions in our care area
One of our priorities as an organisation is to extend our reach to support more people. Last year, colleagues from our Education and Research team held an informal focus group with carers visiting our Wellbeing Centre. They were keen to find out which groups of people they found to be most and least helpful when it came to helping them care for their relative or friend. Front desk staff in surgeries and clinics were identified as being a crucial link for our carers: while many were praised for their efficiency and responsiveness, others were felt to lack an understanding of the reality of carer needs: examples included prescriptions taking too long to be processed, and a failure to understand how time-poor carers can be.
Our Education and Research team discovered that no end-of-life training was available to front desk practice staff. A meeting was held with three GP Practice Managers within our care area and it was agreed that creating a ‘Palliative Care Champion’ role in surgeries would be an effective way to share knowledge and support carers.
Our team set about co-creating a training programme to help staff in health centres, clinics and GP surgeries who support patients and those caring for them towards the end of their life. The programme was co-designed with input from two Practice Managers and, importantly, a carer of a palliative patient. The result was a free pilot course held at the Hospice, which attended by 11 primary care workers.
Feedback after the training was positive, and included:
‘’Very knowledgeable staff enjoyed it and learns loads’’
‘’It was very informative and really eye opening’’
Course attendees also commented on how much they enjoyed visiting the Hospice for the course, noting how being able to visualise it would help when talking to patients and their carers.
Our Education and Research team is exploring running a second training session for front office practice staff at the end of June/early July 2026. If you know anybody working in primary care who would be interested in attending this training, please contact [email protected] for further details.
