A picture of practice nursing today

Many policy documents now include general practice nursing as part of the solution to delivering increasing amounts of primary care.^1,2,3

What appears to be lacking, is useful data about the general practice nursing workforce, and detailed information about nurses training for the role.

Two separate surveys, one conducted by the RCN in 2009⁴ and the Working in Partnership (Wipp) Snapshot survey in 2008⁵ collected information, but there is no current national information about nurse training. This will be essential if commissioners and educators are to start tackling future workforce issues such as the lack of students going into primary care and the number of practice nurses approaching retirement. Some areas such as Yorkshire and Humber have collected detailed local workforce information, but this is not the case across the whole of the UK.