Challenges Faced By Primary Care in UK

Global examples of PA’s and how this applies to UK with recommendations for UK 

1) Challenges Faced by Primary Care in UK

• Ageing Population

In the UK medicine, it could be said that there is the perfect storm in the healthcare sector because there is rising expectations from the country aging population because people in the countries are facing the complex and chronic needs and they are growing number of the Pas. Consequently, interventions are there in the segment and high-quality care is focused. Moreover, the general practice is facing threat because there are increasing shift in the PAs or the secondary care. The age profile for the GP workforce can be said that it is decreasing because primary care is not much focused on the new professionals. There is retirement in this profession and the PAs are increasing; there are about one out of 10 are newly-qualified PAs and in this way, the trend for the general practice or the GP registrar is ending because the posts going unfilled (Parle & Ennis, 2015).

• High-quality care

There are issues in order to implement PA model because there are several issues that need to be considered in the UK secondary care setting; the physician associates in the country are the focus to cover and stability and provide the assistance to the people because there are PAs in the field. In the medical teams, there is the focus on the adoption and deployment so that there could be support by the professionals, there is the range of specialties as there is general practice but still, GP professionals are coming to end because PAs are taking many concerns in the field. However, it is noticed that there is the need to set to expand the GP professionals so that there could be better physicians and associates. The countries need to consider the general practice because they are coming to end (Schoen, Osborn, Doty, Squires, Peugh, & Applebaum., 2009).

• Age profile of the GP workforce

Focused on the age profile of the GP workforce, it is noticed that the GPs are not considered as the modern workforce; only 1 out of 10 people are focused on the course of GP. The research has focused on the satisfaction survey regarding the general practices and it is known that there is the need to employ physician associates in England because people are satisfied with them. They able to treat the minor illnesses and they are the focus on the immediate hospital admission. The physician associate PAs have the positive experiences and there are positive outcomes from doing the consultation from them, the patients have said that they are benefited by the PAs because they are guiding them in the better way, as focused by the research (Halter, Drennan, Joly, Gabe, Gage, & Lusignan, 2017).

The GP consultations also need to be treated on the effective way because there are patients who trust and have confidence in them, both the professionals of physician associate PAs and GP need to be secured because both are the individual physician associate and focused on the basic general practice. The research noticed through the patient’s assessment that patients have the willingness to consult with the physician associates because they provide them with the effective practices. The appropriate general practitioner can be substitute by the PAs but there the patients faced the attitudinal barriers (Halter, Drennan, Joly, Gabe, Gage, & Lusignan, 2017).

• General practice and GP registrar

General practice and GP registrar have own treatment models, consequently, it is noticed that both the professionals have the values are both need to be retained by giving the special care, as the PAs mode able to offer GPs both in the short run as well as in the long run, thus, there is the need to think about the permanent solution that how there could be benefits from the ever-growing medical tasks. The general practice is trained as they also have the experience in the medical model they can teach the new PAs. PAs in the modern times are concerned as the dependent practitioners because they are the clinical professions and providing as well as satisfying the patients as suggested in the researchers (Halter, et al., 2017).

2) Global Examples

• USA and Australia

There are England employs of about 620,000; that is professionally qualified and serving as the clinical staff; they are focused on the effective workforce planning system so that there could be the delivery of the modern-day health care. In the UK there are social and technological practices so that there could be better locally and nationally practices in the adult nursing, primary care or general practice etc. the support is given to the medicine and paramedics so that the challenges could be focused for sustaining. In the UK there are effective national approaches for the betterment and long-term consistency so that better implementation of the workforce policy and planning could be noticed (Buchan, Seccombe, & Charlesworth, 2016).

• Strengths, limitations, impact

Comparing the aspects of USA and Australia from the UK, it needs to be noticed that the UK is providing the better assistance in the medical term of professionals. The country has the range of specialties. As the assessment on the USA and Australia, it is said that there is the focus on the primary care practices because the secondary care is focused much in the UK however, it is the limitation for both the countries.

UK is at 15th out of 30 from the OECD countries also considering the USA and Australia, the UK only deploys number one level of the registered nurse in the world. However, other countries OECD have the ‘second-level’ nurse. There are strengths to USA and Australia because primary care but is noticed that there are better training in the UK when compared to the other OECD countries or USA and Australia. Australia has about 20% of the qualified nurses only (Buchan, Seccombe, & Charlesworth, 2016).

3) Recommendations

• Implement PA model

It is recommended to implement PA model so that there could be better practices by the drawing clinicians and so that the objective of PAs could be effectively achieved. The patients are satisfied at the national and international level, it is known through the assessment and re-assessment that the professionals PAs and GPs can reduce burnout support and GPs to manage to work collaboratively. Moreover, GPs also need to be given new practices because they already have the learning as the practitioners, so the support to GPs needs to be given by the new models of PAs.  It is considered in the recommendations that primary and secondary practices care in the UK are at best level, however, primary practices are more concerned by the physician associates and clinical professions.

• Issues for consideration

The issues can be related to the cost because training, medication, and treatment can be expensive but workforce needs to be the recruit for the betterment of the processes. There can be issues in considering these practices because the gaps are known, however, the GP workforce and PAs need to be focused on the segment and high-quality care together so that there could be better practices and the newly-qualified PAs can train the GP registrar; as it is ending. There is need to consider the general practice by focused on the physician associates because people in England are satisfied; as the UK has registered nurse at 1^st level in the world. However, the GPs are the outdated workforce model so that countries are facing the issues in the recruitment and retention for this leader, thus, there is need to do the continuity and partnership in the PAs model to provide the support to the GPs.

References;

• Buchan, J., Seccombe, I., & Charlesworth, A. (2016). Staffing matters; funding counts. Workforce profile and trends in the English NHS, 1-44.
• Halter, M., Drennan, V. M., Joly, L. M., Gabe, J., Gage, H., & Lusignan, S. d. (2017). Patients’ experiences of consultations with physician associates in primary care in England: A qualitative study. Health Expectations, 20 (5), 1011-1018.
• Halter, M., Wheeler, C., Drennan, V. M., Lusignan, S. d., Grant, R., Gabe, J., et al. (2017). Physician associates in England’s hospitals: a survey of medical directors exploring current usage and factors affecting recruitment. Clinical Medicine, 17 (2), 126-131.
• Parle, J. V., & Ennis, J. (2015). Physician associates: The challenge facing general practice. British Journal of General Practice, 65 (632), 224-225.
• Schoen, C., Osborn, R., Doty, M. M., Squires, D., Peugh, J., & Applebaum., S. (2009). A survey of primary care physicians in eleven countries, 2009: perspectives on care, costs, and experiences. Health Affairs, 28 (6), w1171-w1183.