East Antrim GP Federation Quarterly Newsletter April 2025
- Northern Federation Support Unit
- May 2
- 11 min read
Updated: May 6
A Note From the Chair - Dr Ian Lalsingh
Dear Colleagues,
I have some positive and exciting news to share. Transformation money has been approved for MDT rollout for five Federations, including East Antrim. SPPG has requested joint Trust/Federation plans be submitted by each FSU area. The Northern area plan has been submitted and accepted by SPPG.
The detail of the exact monetary funding for each Federation and Trust has not yet been finalised. Once SPPG have approved all plans region wide and there is agreement on the budget then I would expect an official MDT allocation notification from SPPG. At that point, we will commence MDT rollout in earnest.
However, we are still progressing our plans for implementation. We will interview for physiotherapists in May and we have another MDT Q&A event this Thursday 1st May at Corr’s Corner. This time we will have Nuala Lamont attending. She is practice manager in Ballymoney Health Centre and gained valuable experience through the Causeway MDT project.
Look forward to seeing you then, or at the BMA road show event planned for later the same day!
Federation Education
Dr Richard McClean, Dr Aine McNeill, Shauna McKinley & Janice Russell -
Federation Education Team
It has been a busy year from a FedED perspective as we continue to arrange our quarterly PBL sessions and develop the small group learning sessions for GP Trainees/Trainers.
📅 February PBL Session
Our February session featured our yearly safeguarding update, followed by an informative session on the diagnosis and management of ADHD in adults, delivered by Dr. Richard Bunn.
🩺 Upcoming PBL – 4th June
The next PBL session will take place on Tuesday 4th June, featuring clinical sessions on:
Hepatology with Dr. Brook Layard (Consultant Hepatologist – Belfast Health and Social Care Trust)
Haematology with Dr. Aaron Niblock (Consultant Haematologist – Northern Health and Social Care Trust)
📊 Future of PBL Sessions
As mentioned in my last update, the future of our EAFed PBL sessions is still under review as we explore potential alternative ways of delivering educational content.
We’ve delayed circulating a survey regarding potential changes in 2025/26 in the hope of having more concrete proposals to present to practices. When the survey is shared, I strongly encourage everyone to complete it — this will help ensure any future PBL arrangements meet the needs and wishes of our member practices.
👨⚕️👩⚕️ GP Trainee/Trainer Small Group Sessions
Our most recent session was on 2nd April, offering:
An update on the diagnosis and management of Type 2 Diabetes
A hands-on POCUS (Point of Care Ultrasound) session, facilitated by Dr. Andrew CupplesIt was an engaging and practical session that showcased the value of POCUS in enhancing patient care.
📍 Next Small Group Session – 2nd July
Our final GP Trainee/Trainer session before the summer break will be held on Tuesday 2nd July in Larne Health Centre.
Karen Foreman, one of our EAFed GPP leads, will facilitate a session on:
🫁 “The Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in Primary Care”
Looking ahead to 2025/26, I hope to further develop these small group sessions and open them up to any clinical staff who may benefit. This format offers a rich learning environment, encourages questions, and allows specific learning needs to be addressed.
Additionally, facilitating a small group session provides trainees with opportunities to address several portfolio domains, such as “Leadership activity” and “Maintaining performance, learning and teaching.”
🙏 Thank You
A big thank you to all our host practices over the past year. If any trainers would like to get involved in 2025/26, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at r.mcclean@doctors.org.uk or send a text via the EAFed WhatsApp group.
Nicola Smyth and Karen Foreman - Lead General Practice Pharmacists
While this quarter has been relatively quiet, we’re pleased to share a piece of positive news from within the team.
Congratulatons to Pawel Ciunajtis on completing his FP1 qualification. 🎉
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.
We’ll be continuing to develop this project by reviewing and updating the information regularly — so feel free to visit often!
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 starting 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].
We’ve received the 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:
🏫 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].
❔ MDT Q&A’s
You can find attached Practice-Based Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDT) Frequently Asked Questions below,
The latest updated versions will be available on our website - 🔗www.northernfsu.co.uk/resources
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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