The Open Doors practice nurse development programme

In November 2007 I was asked to research options for a combined recruitment and training programme for practice nurses and healthcare assistants working in Tower Hamlets PCT - a small but densely populated area of inner east London. A very poor result in a survey of access to GP care prompted this research. Despite the PCT performing well in many other areas, it needed to make radical changes to the infrastructure to improve access.

One of the planned changes was to increase the number of clinical staff working with GPs. Teams were struggling to recruit and retain nurses with the skills needed to deal with the complex health and mental health issues experienced by the ethnically diverse population.