General practice: a nurse-led approach to minor illness management

Many practices have looked at how demand for minor illnesses can be managed effectively by using the people and skills in their practice nursing teams in new ways. By channelling demand for minor illness consultations to the nursing team the practice can deliver improved care and choice for patients seeking advice and treatment.

What can you expect to achieve by introducing an alternative to GP minor illness management? This will depend on the circumstances in your practice but our case study sites each have their own success stories, for example:

  • 60 appointments saved each week for a practice with a 6000 population
  • "extra" appointments at the end of routine clinics becoming a thing of the past
  • longer GP appointment times, extended from 10 – 15 minutes
  • maintaining services without the need to recruit to a GP vacancy

You may already have a nurse-led minor illness service up and running in your practice. If you do our guides and case studies can help you benchmark your service against the experience of other practices.

Key ingredients for a successful nurse-led minor illness service include:

  • Getting off to a good start – introducing a new service will be a major change for your practice, getting the practice team behind the project and securing their support is essential
  • Finding the right person – matching the skills and abilities of your practice nursing team to the role of the minor illness nurse will help you to identify the right person for the role
  • Making the most of training – identifying training needs of your nursing and reception staff will help you to develop your team. There are a range of local and national training resources that you can use to equip your staff for this new role
  • A demand led service – understanding the demand in your practice and designing a service that reflects this is important, focusing on areas of high demand, e.g. children will help make an immediate impact
  • Reception team – don't forget the reception team, they have a vital role in helping patients to choose the right service for them and in providing reassurance
  • Keeping patients informed – helping patients to understand and navigate the new service will help to embed the change so that next time they have a minor illness they know where to go first.

Find out more in our guide to setting up a nurse-led minor illness service.