Nurses set out on Northumberland roadshow to build relations between students and patients

The Nurses on Tour 2022 project, spearheaded by Joanna Vintis, aspires to help support students gain valuable experience and provide patients extra access to NHS check-ups.

The project, which is heading to 10 GP practices in Northumberland, aims to encourage more student nurses to consider primary care and general practice as a career choice, while supporting students looking to further their learning and build new working relationships in the region.

The project has outlined three main goals, to give patients access to NHS health checks and identify those patients who need further intervention from their practice team, to give students the opportunity to experience primary care and encourage them to think about it as a career and to help show practices the benefit of hosting student nurses and the positive impact they can have while on placement with GPs in the area.

With Nurses on Tour, Joanna, who is the practice link nurse for NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), is passionate about helping bring GPs and students together and is confident the project will help provide a bigger uptake of opportunities for students.

She said: “I am hoping more practices will look at supporting student nurses, currently out of 38 practices only close to a quarter have regularly hosted student nurses,”

“Nurses on Tour really provides a practical example of how students nurses can be incorporated into general practice and how, in turn, practices can be a fantastic inspiration for the next generation of practice nurses.”

“We have the ambitious aim of seeing more than 500 patients across 10 practices in Northumberland during the event.

She added: “We’re thrilled to have had more than 50 student nurses asking to take part in the event. This has included adult and children’s mental health students and learning disability nursing students. It’s really reflected the variety of workload that we see in primary care across Northumberland.”

Nurses on Tour is running throughout this month and into July. If your GP practice is taking part and you are eligible for a free health check, then you will be contacted by them directly.