Antrim Ballymena GP Federation Quarterly Newsletter April 2025
- Northern Federation Support Unit
- May 2
- 12 min read
Updated: May 6
A note from the Chair - Dr Alan Lewis
Colleagues,
We have been successful in recruiting 2 experienced General Practice Pharmacists and look forward to welcoming them to our team over the next little while.
We hope this will help take some pressure off the team who are already stretched considerably, and hopefully practices who have not been getting their full allocation will see some improvement also.
We are looking forward to another Hot Topics event in on the 21st May at Tullyglass. This has been very successful in previous years, and we trust the Hot Topics team will deliver a fabulous day of GP focused learning.
Thanks to the team at NFSU who have established the Medical Admin Training Academy; our first cohort of trainees will have successfully completed their training on 13th May 2025. We hope this training academy will continue to run and be a reliable recruitment pool for practices locally.
This is all from me currently. I hope you find this newsletter informative and helpful.
General Practice Nurses
Anne Witherow - Federation Lead Nurse
🩺 Cervical Screening Course
Four of the Federation General Practice Nurses will hand in their final portfolio in May regarding completion of the Cervical Screening Course and are now able to run their own Cervical Screening Clinics.
🎓 Postgraduate Certificate in Practice Nursing
We have one trainee GPN who will also complete their Postgraduate Certificate in General Practice Nursing in May 2025.
🙏 Thank You
We would like to acknowledge and say a sincere thank you for the support provided by GPNs and GPs in supervising staff to complete these two courses, and for helping them gain the required supervised sessions to enable them to establish their independent clinics — be it cervical screening or long-term condition management.
Joanne Caldwell & Lyndsey Alexander - Lead General Practice Pharmacists
💊 General Practice Pharmacists Update
Antrim/Ballymena GP Federation – April 2025
Spring is a season of change and progress, and it’s certainly been a busy and exciting time for the General Practice Pharmacists across the Federation!
🌟 Celebrating Achievements and Hard Work
A huge good luck to Emma Hughes, who has recently submitted her FP1 portfolio, and to Diarmaid Graham and Ciara Mooney, who have submitted their Independent Prescribing portfolios. We wish them all the very best as they await their results – a testament to their dedication and hard work.
🏃♀️ Belfast Marathon Relay – Running for a Great Cause
We’re proud to cheer on our fabulous Federation relay team – Joanne Caldwell, Lucie Gage, Emma Hughes, Emma Kelly, and Heather Totten – who will be taking part in the Belfast Marathon Relay on Sunday 4th May.
The team are raising money for Chest, Heart and Stroke – a fantastic cause. Best of luck to them all for the big day!
🧡 If you would like to donate, you can do so via the following link:
A huge thank you to everyone who has given so generously so far!
📅 Upcoming Training Events
Looking ahead, we have some great training opportunities coming up:
Northern GPP Masterclass – Tuesday 7th May
Hot Topics – Tuesday 21st May
We encourage everyone to attend and make the most of these informative sessions.
👋 Fond Farewells
We say a warm goodbye and thank you to:
Ciara Mooney, who is moving on to a new role with the Armagh/Dungannon Federation.
Emma Kelly, who will be leaving us on 16th May to take up a post with SPPG.
We wish them both every success in their new roles and thank them sincerely for their contributions to the team.
💬 Final Thanks
A heartfelt thank you to all GP practices for your continued support and flexibility during this period of staff transitions. Your collaboration and understanding make all the difference.
Thanks also to all our GPPs for your continued enthusiasm, professionalism, and support across practices in the Federation.
Federation Education
Dr John Goodrich - Educational Lead
📍 Hot Topics Spring 2025 – Tullyglass Hotel, Wednesday 21st May
We are delighted to be bringing a Hot Topics Spring 2025 Update to Tullyglass Hotel on Wednesday 21st May.
Preparations are already well underway, and the closing date for booking is Tuesday 6th May. Emails have been sent to each practice regarding eligibility and the booking link.
This event offers a superb day of CPD and networking, with catering and refreshments provided.
📅 Please register before Tuesday 6th May to reserve your place.
❤️🩹 Annual CPR Training – Re-Launching September 2025
Annual CPR training is mandatory, and we’ve been exploring ways to provide a local and cost-effective option for practices.
View more details here
💡 We Want Your Ideas!
If there’s any training you’d like to see offered, or if you have suggestions for future sessions, please get in touch with Hannah Wilson at FSU:
GP Elective Care Services
Dr Conor Gorman - Deputy Clinical Director for Elective Care
Good News - Gynaecology Service.
We are pleased to let everyone know that our Women's Health (Gynaecology) Service has secured recurrent funding with capacity being brought back up to what it was before the funding cuts.
This will result in significantly shorter waiting times for patients to access the service after referral from GP. We would thus encourage all our colleagues in Primary Care to consider referring to this service again. Referral criteria remain the same. We will be promoting this regionally over the coming weeks, EA being first to know:)
We are continuing to lobby and negotiate for recurrent funding of our other services- MSK, Dermatology and Skin Surgery and will hopefully have news on these over next months.
We have also completed a proof of concept pilot for management of Low Risk BCC within primary care, operating on over a hundred patients with BCC. We are hoping that this will lead to a service being commissioned. Big thank you to the EA clinicians and admin team who worked with us on this.
Finally, we would like to thank all our Host Practice Admin Teams , EFSU and our clinicians for their continued efforts and support to sustain the services through the last few bleak years. As well as our appreciation of all our GP colleagues who have continued to refer into the services.
Conor
Northern GP Federation Support Unit Update (NFSU)
NFSU - Keeping you up to date with our team.
👶 New Arrival!
We’re delighted to share the wonderful news that Rachael, our Project Coordinator, has welcomed a beautiful baby girl — Lara! Both mum and baby are doing really well.
Congratulations to Rachael and her family on their new arrival! 💕
NFSU HR
Cathy Christie - HR Officer
Carol Shaw - HR Administrator
Federation Teams Take on the Belfast Marathon 🏃♀️
Our Federation areas are gearing up for the Belfast Marathon Relay on 4th May 2025, each team running in support of a chosen charity. Best of luck to all participants!
East Antrim Federation – Running for Stroke Association
Clare Gallagher, Michael Ervine, Pawel Ciunajtis, Ciara Briers & Mark Briers
Click to see more and donate
Causeway Federation – Running for Dementia UK
Mary McBride, Karina Duffy, Jenny Chartres, Susie Weir & Donna Campbell
Click to see more and donate
Mid Ulster Federation – Running for Charis Cancer Care
Niall O’Kane, Mark Donnelly, Mairead Quinn, Nichola Stewart & Anne-Marie Pickering
Click to see more and donate
Antrim Ballymena Federation – Running for Northern Ireland Chest, Heart & Stroke
Joanne Caldwell, Emma Kelly, Heather Totten, Emma Hughes & Lucie Gage
Click to see more and donate
Upcoming Webinars & Learning Opportunities 📢
Previous Event
Thank you to those who attended the recent Wellness Toolbox Webinar delivered by Action Mental Health on Wednesday 30th April 2025.
The presentation from this session will be uploaded in due course to our [HR Health & Wellbeing page], once made available to us. Keep an eye out if you were unable to attend or would like a refresher.
Upcoming Session
📅 Monday 3rd June 2025
Join us for an Information Session with Health Shield, our provider for the Cash Health Plan.
If you’d like more information or have any questions ahead of the session, feel free to contact hr@northernfsu.co.uk.
NFSU Project Update
Naomi Hutchinson
To put a face to our names and for the relevant contact details, click here -
💷 Economies of Scale – Cost Saving Information Now Live on Website!
Please take a moment to explore the cost-saving information we have researched and summarised, now available on our website:
We would encourage everyone to bookmark this page for easy access.
To do so, once you click on the link, simply save it to your favourites in your browser, as per the following:
We’ll be continuing to develop this project by reviewing and updating the information regularly — so feel free to visit frequently!
Practice Index – Contract Funded by NFSU (Expires End of 2025)
The NFSU Executive Team approved a significant investment of over £70,000 for a 3-year Practice Index contract which started in early 2023 — fully funded for all member practices.
With the contract set to expire at the end of 2025, we’d like to share some usage statistics to date:
✅ 14% (9 practices) have completed 50 or more courses through Practice Index.
❌ 54% of practices (39 out of 72) have never completed a course.
📈 A total of 557 courses have been completed across 34 practices (52%).
If you’d like to access or make better use of Practice Index, now is the time — there are just 6 months remaining on the contract!
One of the offerings available through Practice Index is “Lunchtime Learning” – examples include:
Sharing Best Practice & Information
We appreciate several Practices already share best practice / useful information with one another. If you feel there is useful information etc that you would be happy to share with other Practices within Northern Federations, please feel free to share with us for our next quarterly newsletter - info@northernfsu.co.uk.
AccuRx Partnership -
All information regarding the Federation contract renewal has been confirmed with Accurx for the period May 2025 to April 2026, following two lunchtime webinars.
If you missed these — or if you're a practice migrating from Vision to EMIS in the near future — you can watch them back by clicking the following links:
Read more
Following the webinars, Accurx kindly offered a free trial of Bronze + Booking for the month of April. Nine of our practices registered their interest in this.
Did you know?
📊 70% of NI practices using Accurx have the “Bronze” bundle, and the “Booking” element is also becoming increasingly popular.
💡 Practices can try “Patient Triage” for three months for free! You can sign up for the trial [here].
Frequently asked Accurx question:
“We are a practice due to migrate to EMIS in summer 2025—will we be able to avail of the Federation’s 33% discount for Accurx?”
✅ The simple answer is yes. If this applies to your practice, please email us at info@northernfsu.co.uk when you're ready to join.
You will automatically have access to Accurx Lite, which you can begin using at any time, free of charge.
Helpful guides:
Other Useful Links
📄 The following PDF includes a collection of click-through guides, allowing you to explore the product without needing to download the toolbar first:
📬 Need support with an Accurx query?
Read more
💼 GP Modernisation Programme – Accounts Software Systems
Following conversations with our member Practices, we organised a lunchtime webinar with BSO in relation to the GP Modernisation Programme. If you were unable to attend and would like to find out more:
Read more
Iris is an IT Management Company who can provide Cloud Hosted Software and industry-leading, business-critical software solutions and services to manage core business operations. The following are options that may be of interest to you:
💻 IRIS Hosting
Delivers all IRIS products, Microsoft software, and third-party desktop applications as a managed service over the internet for a single monthly fee.
Can be Payroll and/or Accounts
1–4 users can access on any device
Initial & Ongoing Costs:
🌐 IRIS Anywhere - A fully remote, flexible cloud-hosted desktop for businesses. From client files to Microsoft programs.
Can be Payroll and/or Accounts, and any other desktop applications
5 or more users can access on any device
Uses Microsoft Azure
Multi-factor authentication enabled
Potential for Practices to join together for cost-saving benefits (with individual user permissions)
Initial & Ongoing Costs:
💡 Additional Costing Resources:
First Ever Medical Admin Training Academy
We are delighted with how our first ever Medical Administrative Training Academy has gone over the past 5 weeks and look forward to the remaining few weeks with the participants.
All the trainers and NFSU staff have found it a pleasure welcoming, working with, and supporting the 9 participants to further develop their admin skills to ensure they are much better placed to apply for and succeed in medical administration opportunities on successful completion of the academy.
Each of the participants has fully committed to the training, with a 98% attendance rate, no financial contribution required to complete the academy, and 4 of them travelling as far as Carrickfergus to our NFSU offices twice a week to attend. We feel that this demonstrates their eagerness and commitment already at this early stage.
Given the feedback to date, we are hoping to be in a position to build upon this pilot initiative by duplicating similar academies in other Federations. It is paramount that our member practices collectively support these academies if we are to scale this model.
We would like to sincerely thank the member practices who have kindly supported this pilot academy.
📩 Invite to Celebration Event
🌟 Good News Stories
We know that our Federation staff and Practices carry out excellent work and quite often do not get the opportunity to share the “Good News Stories”.
NFSU would like to encourage each of you to share these with us as — we would encourage each of you to now use our standarised, easily accessed form to submit your stories to us.
👉 Please use the following link (through our website) to share your stories:
We would love to hear from all of you at some point throughout the year.
These stories will enable us to build up a bank of articles which can be used in:
Future Newsletters
Post-project evaluations
Highlight reports (a requirement from SPPG for funded projects)
Future business cases for funding
Promote the work we do via our social media channels
Launching our 2025-2030
5 Year Strategic Plan 📄
Following a strategic planning meeting in May 2024 involving our Federation Chairs, Non-Executive Directors, Member Directors, Practice Managers, and the NFSU, we have been developing a comprehensive five-year Strategic Action Plan.
We are now pleased to formally introduce this plan, which will focus our collective efforts and priorities over the coming five years.
To view the full document, please [click here].
Free Training for Staff – “Community Skills: Education & Training”
Is a member of your admin team work currently involved mentoring of newer staff etc, is there potentially a training role they may incorporate as part of their current role?
This opportunity may be of interest to some of your team, if eligible this is free of charge training! For Mid & East Antrim residents who are over 19.
Further information can be found at:
GP Practice Job Advertising - NFSU Website
Did you know we have a section on our website where we can signpost potential applicants to any current live vacancies our member Practices have?
We would encourage all practices to let us know as and when you have live opportunities.
You can view our careers page for practices here: www.northernfsu.co.uk/nonfederation-gppracticevacancies
Use the form below to promote jobs on our site:
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
Follow the Federation on:
Date of next newsletter - July 2025
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