More nurse practitioners needed in GPs' offices, UK says

The Audit Commission, the independent body responsible for insuring that public money is spent efficiently in the United Kingdom, says it is time to hire more nurse practitioners to ease the workload of the country's GPs.

The commission recently issued a special report, A Focus on General Practice in England (www.audit-commission .gov .uk/), which noted that GPs are responsible for 80% of patient contacts within the NHS but receive only 20% of its budget.

The Royal College of General Practitioners says it supports a different skill mix within general practice but introducing this type of change will be “considerably hampered by the scarcity of primary care nurses, especially nurse practitioners.”

According to the Audit Commission, there are 12 nurses for every specialist consultant in the UK, but 2.3 GPs for every nurse working in a general practice. “Put another way,” says the commission, “whereas 1 in 3 doctors is a GP, only 1 in 20 nurses works in general practice.”

It recommends development of a national strategy to promote nursing careers within general practice and says the country must produce more nurse practitioners who can take on additional duties. “If staffing in general practice was being planned from scratch today,” the report concluded, “it might look rather different.” — Cathel Kerr, Fife, Scotland