Our Primary Care Network builds on the existing primary care services and enables a greater provision of proactive, personalised and more integrated health and social care. We are supported by practitioners in additional roles who allow us to create bespoke multi-disciplinary teams based on the needs of our local population. By working together with local community services, this allows us to make support available to people where it is most needed.
Our multi-disciplinary team
Access facilitators
The access facilitator works across the PCN with the SMI (severe mental illness) cohort of patients. They make contact with the patient and build a rapport with them to ensure they are able to access healthcare they need, in an effective way.
Our access facilitator also provides the physical health checks for each patients such as phlebotomy and blood pressure. Each SMI patient should have access to at least one full health check a year and the AF enables this to happen with ease to the patient.
Our access facilitator is: Carolyn Tipple.
Clinical pharmacists
Clinical pharmacists work in primary care as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas. They work with and alongside the general practice team, taking responsibility for patients with chronic diseases and undertaking clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex medication use, especially for the elderly, people in care homes and those with multiple conditions.
Our clinical pharmacists are: Alex Soyvural, Deepa Patel (senior clinical pharmacist), Claire Shaw and Claire Usher.
Find out more about clinical pharmacists in general practice.
First contact physiotherapists
First contact physiotherapists (FCP) are qualified independent clinical practitioners who can assess, diagnose, treat, and manage musculoskeletal (MSK) problems and undifferentiated conditions and, where appropriate, discharge a person without a medical referral. FCPs working in this role can be accessed directly by patients, or staff in GP practices can refer patients to them to establish a rapid and accurate diagnosis and management plan to streamline pathways of care.
Our first contact physiotherapists are: Georgia Aloof, Lee Barnes and Olly Peck.
Find out more about first contact physiotherapists.
Health and wellbeing coaches
Health and wellbeing coaches (HWBCs) will predominately use health coaching skills to support people to develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become active participants in their care so that they can reach their own health and wellbeing goals. They may also provide access to self-management education, peer support and social prescribing.
Health coaches will support people to self-identify existing issues and encourage proactive prevention of new and existing illnesses. This approach is based on using strong communication and negotiation skills and supports personal choice and positive risk taking.
They will work alongside people to coach and motivate them through multiple sessions, supporting them to identify their needs, set goals, and help them to implement their personalised health and care plan.
Our health and wellbeing coaches are: Eric Downer and Lucy Case.
Find our more about health and wellbeing coaches.
Social prescribing link workers
Social prescribing link workers give people time and focus on what matters to the person as identified in their care and support plan. They connect people to community groups and agencies for practical and emotional support and offer a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, hence the name ‘social prescribing’.
Social prescribing enables patients referred by general practice, pharmacies, multi-disciplinary teams, hospital discharge teams, allied health professionals, fire service, police, job centres, social care services, housing associations and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations to get the right care.
Link workers typically work with people over 6-12 contacts (including phone calls and face-to-face meetings) over a three-month period with a typical caseload of up to 250 people, depending on the complexity of people’s needs.
Our social prescribing link workers are: Amelia Drake, Hazel Lawson, Hazel Sharrad, Kaz Scovell, Rita McGough, Romany Palmer and Kirsty Durkan (children’s and young persons)
Find our more about social prescribing link workers.