Meet Sue, a GP practice nurse in the East of Newcastle who is part of a team supporting more than six and half thousand patients in one of the most deprived areas of the Northeast. She qualified as a nurse in 2015, having been a healthcare assistant for five years.
“We get absolutely everything in these clinics. Ears to smears I like to say! But it really is head to toe, birth to death.”
The volume and level of need means we’re not just treating health – often we’re having to support with practicalities and troubleshoot for vulnerable patients. With all the will in the world, we, and our resources, are desperately stretched. But that’s all the more reason to keep going. Because we’re committed and care so much about our patients who need us.”
We filmed Sue on a day in August 2023 seeing patients; carrying out health checks and foot care, checking test results, doing blood tests and immunisations and going to the local pharmacy for patients.
257 calls were taken the day of the film (nearly a third were answered in under a minute) with more than 100 prescriptions processed.
St Anthony’s have 6616 patients, and a number with complex health problems. They currently have three of their six doctors on maternity leave for 12 months, so to ensure patients continue to have a high standard of care they are working with regular locum doctors.
They have 31 staff, including GPs, a practice pharmacist, nurses, health care assistants, a social prescribing link worker, a psychology welfare practitioner and a child psychologist, a reception and admin team and many more.
The practice has a slightly younger population than average with more young families than most other practices in the city. They look after an above average numbers of patients with long term conditions and a higher-than-average clinician to patient ratio.
They are identified as a ‘Deep End practice’ providing healthcare services to the 15-20% most deprived UK populations (as identified by the index of multiple deprivation).