Meet Becky, a general practice nurse in the West End of Newcastle who also works at the local food bank.
“I left school with very little direction and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but my Nana got poorly, and I spent some time caring for her – from that day on I decided that I would be a nurse in her memory. I absolutely love my job and wouldn’t change anything about it. I feel proud to work for the NHS.”
Becky has been a nurse for 20 years and is a ‘Queen’s Nurse’, an honorary title awarded to those nurses committed to delivering and leading outstanding care in the community. She also works at the local food bank, offering a one-stop health drop-in on behalf of three practices in the West of the city.
We filmed Becky on a day in July 2023, and during the film we see Becky meeting varied patient needs from acute assessment to contraception, blood tests, COPD and asthma management to immunisations.
West Road Medical Centre where Becky works has 36 staff supporting more than 11,000 patients.
More than 400 phone calls were taken on the day of the film, with 187 appointments fulfilled and 258 prescriptions processed. As with all GP practices in the city, the work of the team is more than just appointments and prescriptions, with the practice also managing tests and results, coordinating hospital letters and referrals, doing safeguarding reports, contacting patients to flag up when they may need a test, treatment or to self-care and much more.
There are 42 different languages spoken by patients at the practice including Arabic, Romanian, Bengali, Czech, Spanish and Cantonese. 22% do not have English as their first language. There is a well-established Pakistani/Bangladeshi community, and a growing population of people from Eastern Europe.
The practice often uses face-to-face and telephone interpreters which can impact on the length of the appointment. As with all other practices in the city, the practice has a team of social prescribers who can meet the non-clinical needs of the patient allowing the nursing team to focus on patient treatment.