October 2024
A note from the Chair - Dr Alan Lewis
Thanks to all our member directors who were able to attend our recent AGM on 2nd October. We provided a brief update on our employees, including GPPs and GPNs, as well as our federation’s education plans and our accounts. The minutes for this meeting are available on our website at https://www.northernfsu.co.uk/abminutes
Unfortunately, we did not have enough attendees to form a quorum to sign off on the accounts, and a reminder email has been circulated. For those member directors who have not yet signed off, please take a moment to review the accounts and confirm your approval.
As discussed at the AGM, a service level agreement has been circulated for practices to sign. This agreement, regionally approved by SPPG and FSUs, formalises our existing practices. Please review this document, and kindly sign and return it to info@northernfsu.co.uk at your earliest convenience.
I recently reached out to Roger Kennedy, Programme Director for MDT, for updates on the MDTs. His response was positive, confirming that the MDT programme remains a high priority as the final HSC transformation bid for the DoH. The MDT bid was well-received, and progress continues to access this funding. While Antrim and Ballymena may not be included at this stage, we remain hopeful for the programme’s rollout to restart soon.
With thanks, as always.
Encompass/Epic Transition on 7th November
On 7th November, the Northern Trust will transition to the new Encompass/Epic system. If you missed the training held on 16th October, you can access the full recording on the Northern Federation Support Unit website. The website also includes a feature to report any Encompass-related issues directly to the Northern Trust.
Visit www.northernfsu.co.uk/encompass for more details.
General Practice Nurses
Anne Witherow - Federation Lead Nurse
We are delighted to welcome two new GPNs to the team: one qualified and one trainee.
We also celebrated with Kathryn, who recently qualified after successfully completing her 12-month training programme, achieving her Postgraduate Certificate in General Practice Nursing alongside valuable treatment-room experience. Well done, Kathryn!
We continue to support our GPN staff with tutorials led by Dr. Cobain, inviting all practice nurses to join. We are pleased to see a number of practice-employed GPNs taking advantage of these opportunities.
Federation Education
Dr John Goodrich - Secretary and Educational Lead
Working within a budget and reaching busy colleagues at convenient times has made CPD provision a challenge in recent years. We operate in a field with excellent content available through the Royal College, BMA, indemnity organisations, and commercial providers. Standing out with fresh, relevant content is not easy. Our aim is to focus on local issues: connecting with consultant colleagues and learning more about the local provisions and pathways we all use regularly. This also provides an opportunity for local networking, bringing social and professional benefits.
We hope to expand events to include other members of the primary care team, such as GPPs and PMs. Maria McCann, our Practice Manager Lead, has joined the team to assist with planning.
Our immediate goal is to hold two afternoon events in the coming months, one on either side of Christmas, featuring a multidisciplinary agenda. Details will be circulated by email soon.
We are also considering a larger event for spring 2025. In previous years, we partnered with Hot Topics, and similar options are currently under review.
Lastly, we are exploring the possibility of re-opening PBL days with full Dalriada cover to create time for practice development and staff training. Meetings are planned to assess feasibility, and we will provide an update once we know more.
Joanne Caldwell & Lyndsey Alexander - Lead General Practice Pharmacists
We welcome new GPP Emma Jane Hughes, who joined the Federation in August 2024. We hope she enjoys working in Antrim/Ballymena. Emma is the first GPP to begin employment using our new GPP Induction Programme.
We also welcome our new Lead GPP, Lyndsey Alexander, who is covering for Aislinn during her maternity leave. We know she will rise to the challenge!
Upcoming training includes annual CPR in October with Safe Hands, and the Northern Federation GPP Masterclass in November. Both are highlights in our training calendar and great opportunities for the team to connect.
In September 2024, we welcomed our first cohort of pharmacy students for the academic year. This has been a rewarding opportunity to showcase the work our GPPs do to undergraduate students, with positive feedback from both Practice Supervisors and students.
Congratulations to our GPPs Diarmaid Graham, Ciara Mooney, and Emma Laverty, who recently passed the Foundation Programme (FP2) and IP.
We also celebrate a great success at our annual Recognising Achievement Awards. Congratulations to our two finalists, Lena Harkin and Emma Kelly! Lena won her category of Excellence in Practice for her QI project on reducing inappropriate ordering of stoma products from third parties. Well done to both finalists—this event highlights the exceptional work our GPPs are doing to improve prescribing practices.
Below are photos of our two finalists. We are extremely proud of both of you!
Emma Kelly presenting her QI project addressing Prolactin monitoring of patients on Antipsychotics.
Lena Harkin won her category of Excellence in Practice for her QI project.
Quality Improvement Support
Dr Frew Johnston - QI Facilitator
The Northern Federations are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Frew Johnston as our Quality Improvement (QI) Facilitator. Dr. Johnston is dedicated to supporting practices in their continuous journey to improve quality of care and service delivery. If your practice is currently working on a QI project or is considering initiating one, Dr. Johnston is available to provide valuable insights and guidance.
Whether you need assistance with measuring progress, refining your project’s focus, or exploring innovative strategies to achieve your goals, Dr. Johnston offers tailored support to meet your practice’s specific needs. Reach out to him for expert advice to help ensure your projects create meaningful, lasting impact.
For support or more information, please contact Dr. Frew Johnston at frew.johnston@northernfsu.co.uk
NFSU HR
Cathy Christie - HR Officer
Carol Shaw - HR Administrator
In support of the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning for Macmillan Cancer, NFSU raised £135. 💚🎂🧁
A podiatry webinar with Suzanne Hamilton is available to view on our website at https://www.northernfsu.co.uk/health-wellbeing.
On Thursday, 10th October 2024, we hosted the “Pause for Conversations” webinar with Catherine Murnin from The Wellbeing Project. Although the session was not recorded, we have shared the resources from the webinar in the Health & Wellbeing section of the NFSU website.
🤶❄️🎄
This Christmas, we will be supporting Women’s Aid with several activities:
Online Safe Place Course on 28th November 2024. This 90-minute training is open to all, and further information will be shared with practice managers and federation staff.
Christmas Coffee Morning on Friday, 12th December 2024, held on Christmas Jumper Day to raise funds for Women’s Aid. We encourage practices to host their own coffee mornings, and a donation link will be set up closer to the time.
Collection for a Local Refuge Shelter: We’ll be collecting items to donate to a refuge shelter in Ballymena. A list of items will be shared in early to mid-November. If anyone would like to contribute, please deliver items to NFSU before 12 noon on Wednesday, 18th December 2024.
Additionally, we’re excited to announce that NFSU will have a team participating in the 2025 Marathon Relay! It’s a wonderful opportunity to support each other, promote wellbeing, and represent our Federation in the community.
Northern GP Federation Support Unit (NFSU)
If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions for Antrim Ballymena GP Federation please contact NFSU on info@northernfsu.co.uk.
Naomi Hutchinson and Rachael Elliott - Project Coordinators
Staff Update within Projects
Naomi has returned to her role of Project Coordinator after being off on maternity leave. She had a baby girl called Mya last September and all is going well with them. Rachael was covering Naomi’s work whilst she was off, and we are delighted to confirm that Rachael will also remain a Project Coordinator within NFSU. This is good news as both Naomi and Rachael can be involved in project work and undertake additional projects.
Please feel to contact either Naomi or Rachael at:
NRC Course Update 2024/2025 / Possibility of an In-House Training Programme
Following the completion of “Level 2 Diploma in Primary Care Medical Administration” during 23/24 with NRC in East Antrim Federation, it was planned to continue offering this course to students within East Antrim Federation and Causeway Federation. Due to some concerns, we have “paused” this with NRC and hope to revisit this initiative in the near future. NRC are to get back to us. In the interim, we are currently exploring the possibility of an in-house admin training program at NFSU which we would envisage to cover similar content to the admin course, ensuring the content is tailored to our practices’ requirements. We are currently researching this option and will be in correspondence with all Practice Managers with further details once we have a comprehensive proposal. This in-house training programme would be open to those interested from all 4 Federation areas (depending on those potential students interested and if they met the eligibility criteria).
Economies of Scale Cost Savings - Webinar
We are well underway with this project, and you already will be benefiting from some of the discounts. To continue the momentum with these cost savings we have organised a lunchtime webinar for Tuesday 5 November at 1pm.
During this webinar we want to provide you with a more in-depth update on our research to date and we will require additional information from each of you to ensure we best align our research / findings for the benefit of Practices’. Naomi will be discussing Ink/Toner/Drums, Shredding, General Office Supplies, Oil & Electricity. Rachael will be discussing Paper, Calibration, Fire Safety Pat testing, electric wire / emergency lights. Even though some of the Practices are Trust owned, there may be aspects which will be relevant. Therefore, we would encourage each of you to try and attend.
To date, the below are 2 of the areas Rachael has negotiated cost savings:
Ebrington/Clinical Supplies
The Ebrington clinical supplies scheme, which began on August 1, 2024, has seen 58 out of 68 practices sign up to receive additional discounts and special pricing from Ebrington, averaging approximately 12% per product. Each practice received a pack delivered to their location and an email notification. Following this, the Western Federation has also joined the scheme. We hope that as the scheme progresses, we can collaborate regionally to achieve further cost savings. If you haven’t signed up to this yet, please contact Rachael.elliott@northernfsu.co.uk - Over the past two months, 30 of the 58 participating members have collectively saved £595.23 through discounts, which is a fantastic result.
Stericycle – Clinical Waste
We have achieved significant cost savings with Stericycle by leveraging economies of scale. Several practices have joined Stericycle regionally, and more plan to join in 2025 when their current contracts expire. Once these practices are fully onboarded, we will assess the total cost savings achieved. Currently, we are on tier 3 of pricing, resulting in a 14% savings for each practice compared to joining Stericycle individually. If you interested in joining please contact Smyth, Susan ssmyth@STERICYCLE.com
AccuRx
We continue to support and hold the regional contract for AccuRx for cost savings. In the North alone there is 37 Emis Practices signed up and all finding AccuRx very useful in Practice. We have held 4 training sessions for staff this year with another survey out to create bespoke training for practices on anything they specifically want training on. Once we get the results we will arrange training for the practices. We continue to be the main point of contact for practice and direct finance queries to AccuRx. https://forms.office.com/e/YYB46wPAWM
Defibrillators
Thank you to all those who responded to the survey Naomi emailed out at the end of September with regards to defibrillators. This information has been collated, some of the findings have been shared with the potential supplier and we are awaiting further information from them. We hope we will be back in contact with all those interested within the next couple of weeks.
Practice Index Learning - For all Clinical & admin staff
We would like to remind you that your Federation has purchased a Practice Index Learning package licence for your Practice, which is valid until January 2026. Please ensure you are making the most of this resource. Each Practice Manager has a login, and the Practice Manager can enroll all staff in various courses. There are hundreds of statutory and mandatory courses available for all clinical staff, Practice Managers, Receptionists, and administrative staff. Login - Practice Index HUB The Learning package account is registered on the PMs email if you are having trouble accessing please let me know.
“Please register for a practice account by clicking here
Please note - you may get a message to say that your email address is already in use, or your practice code is already in use. Just ignore these messages and continue with your registration. You and your staff will then have access to our eLearning, Facilitated Learning and Virtual Learning courses. Once you have registered you will be able to login here and see all of the courses available to you.
If you need training on this please join Practice Index every Tuesday at 2pm – register here. Select a Date & Time - Calendly
We can see from our records there are several practices who are currently not using Practice Index. Whilst the use of Practice Index is optional for individual Practices, we may contact those who do not appear to have been utilising it to potentially remove their Practice from the contract to help with cost savings. Please note we would be contact with you individually (if applicable) to discuss this closer to when the contract is expiring.
“Skill Up” Initiative Still Opened to Applications (Free Training)
At the start of September Naomi emailed information to all practices regarding “Skill Up”. Please note that many of these courses at still opened for applications. Further information can be found at: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/skillup
NI Health Ministers Visit – Highlighting the Work of MDTs within General Practice
Mr Mike Nesbitt has kindly accepted an invitation to visit Ballymoney Family Practice next month. This is an event to highlight the work our MDTs carry out within the Causeway Federation. We want to continue emphasising the importance of MDTs by demonstrating the impact of having MDTs can have on our patient population. Keep an eye on our socials and we will share how the event goes in our next newsletter.
Contact us
As always if you have any questions for the FSU, please do not hesitate to contact the Federation Support Unit on info@northernfsu.co.uk or 02896208333
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