Labour’s former nursing advisor has appealed to GPs to highlight the ‘worth’ of general practice nurses (GPNs) and to include them in discussions around terms and conditions.
In an interview with Nursing in Practice, Ann Keen discussed ongoing issues around nurse pay, staffing and the need for the profession to be listened to by MPs.
Ms Keen, a district nurse by background and former health minister, said her ‘plea’ was for GPs to say ‘what we’re worth’ as nurses in primary care.
She added that when campaigning for their terms and conditions, GPs should also include the issue of GPN pay.
Her comments come as NHS England stressed last week that it ‘firmly’ expects GP partners to pass on a 6% pay rise to GPNs and other practice staff.
And as the British Medical Association, which is currently staging GP collective action across England, has said GPNs must be given ‘parity of contractual esteem’ with colleagues in NHS trusts.
The BMA’s GP Committee also recently highlighted how GPNs had been ‘ignored’ by the government for the last five years, as well as ‘diminished’ and ‘belittled’.
As previously reported, the GP contract will be amended to uplift the pay elements by 6% – made up of an additional 4% on top of the 2% already given in April – for 2024/25. The payment will also be backdated to 1 April 2024.
But concerns have been raised over whether or not GPNs in England will see the rise, following the debacle of last year which saw almost half of GP nursing staff without a pay increase at all.
Separately, NHS nurses on Agenda for Change will be awarded a pay rise of 5.5% for 2024/25, after the government accepted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body.
During the interview, Ms Keen questioned the Agenda for Change pay scale and suggested the ‘grading of nurses is just ridiculous’.
Ms Keen said like the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI), she believes all district nurses, for example, should be paid at a band 7 salary, because of the ‘level of responsibility’ they have.
Earlier this year, the government launched a consultation into the introduction of a separate pay structure for NHS nursing staff in England.
Supporting community nursing
Ms Keen highlighted a previous commitment of Labour to train more district nurses in the coming years.
She recalled how health secretary Wes Streeting had been ‘so taken aback’ by the scale of knowledge and care that district nurses provide, having witnessed their work during an outing with the QNI.
Ms Keen recognised ‘there are pockets of extreme excellence, but there are also pockets of unsafe care’ within community nursing.
‘When is the community full? It’s never full,’ she told Nursing in Practice.
‘When acute settings are full you get care in corridors, but we don’t have corridors, we have exhausted community nurses, who know they are not giving the care that they should be giving.’
Ms Keen described how ‘changing the culture of how we manage people starts with a different attitude,’ suggesting that nurses required encouragement in order to thrive.
She added: ‘We’ve got to give them a good support network, and then encourage them.’
‘If you ask district nurses, what would you like to do better? Do you think you could do your job better? What would help you do it better? How can I help you to stay in your job? That’s the approach we’ve got to have,’ she suggested.
