Artificial Intelligence: How it Can Help NHS Staff Engage with Patients Effectively

As a healthcare professional, one of your top priorities is to communicate effectively with your patients. Whether you're trying to inform them about the latest medical procedures, or simply keeping them informed about their treatment plan, effective communication is key to promoting patient satisfaction and promoting positive health outcomes. Over the years, technology has helped healthcare providers communicate with their patients in new and innovative ways, and now the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is set to change the game even further. In this blog, we'll explore the benefits of using AI in blogging, and how NHS staff can use it to engage with their patients effectively.

One of the most significant ways that AI can improve blogging is through the use of natural language processing (NLP). NLP can be used to analyse and understand the text in blog posts and comments and can help healthcare providers identify important trends and insights. For example, NLP can be used to analyse patient feedback and identify areas where healthcare providers need to improve their communication efforts. Additionally, NLP can be used to identify the most frequently asked questions and concerns, and bloggers can use this information to create content tailored specifically to their patients' needs.

Another way that AI can help healthcare providers improve their blogging efforts is through the use of chatbots. Chatbots are computer programs that can interact with patients in real-time and can help answer frequently asked questions or provide personalised guidance. For example, a chatbot could be used to help patients schedule appointments, or to provide information about test results or medications. This can not only free up healthcare staff time and resources, but it can also improve the patient experience by providing patients with the information they need when they need it.

In addition to these benefits, AI can also help healthcare providers improve the overall quality of their blog content. AI can be used to analyse the readability and clarity of blog posts and can provide suggestions for improving the language and structure of the content. This is especially important for healthcare providers, as medical jargon can often be difficult for patients to understand. By using AI to simplify and clarify their writing, healthcare providers can ensure that their patients are fully informed and aware of their medical conditions and treatments.

In conclusion, AI has the potential to revolutionise the way that healthcare providers communicate with their patients through blogging. From analysing patient feedback to creating personalised chatbots, AI can help healthcare providers identify ways to improve their communication efforts and provide better care for their patients. As the field of AI continues to evolve, it's likely that we'll see even more innovative solutions that can help healthcare providers provide top-notch care for their patients. So, if you're an NHS staff member looking to improve your blogging efforts and engagement with patients, consider using the power of AI to take your communication to the next level.

How the receptionist got their scowl

Written by: S. Connor

I believe wholeheartedly that of all the roles in the practice, the reception team have the worst deal. They get paid the least amount of money and they take the most crap from patients, doctors and other members of staff. They work relentlessly from the moment they arrive until they finally get to go home, and the mad thing about it is that they could all earn more money working in a supermarket or behind a bar, but for the most part they stay.

 
I think that we have all had a higher turnover of staff in general since the pandemic, and I know that we have seen a few people come and go with rapidity on reception, but the majority of the old guard have never considered leaving. I admire them enormously, and in all honesty, I do not think that I could do their job on a day-to-day basis.

They are the bedrock of general practice and the foundation upon which we build, and they get no downtime, no real break from their role. Even GPs get a break (if only for a minute) between patients, but for reception a shift is often non-stop picking up phones or dealing face to face with patients. They are highly trained individuals, who receive little to no respect for their experience, and it seems incredible to me that they put up with the treatment they receive. 

If I ever speak to a person, whether it be a patient or someone I know and they are doing a bit of reception bashing, I ask them the same questions;

How would you respond if you were told that you were useless, every day, for years, by the people you serve?
How would you feel, if on a weekly basis at least one patient told you that you couldn’t do your job, or that somehow, their own failure to order their medication was your fault?
How would you feel if you were paid less than £10 an hour and were told by a patient that if they die, it’s your fault?
How would you feel if the public you serve completely disregard your training and the questions you ask because you are only a receptionist?
How would you feel if you worked your arse off for a public who happily label you and your colleagues as dragons?

I think that over time some GP receptionists (and I must stress that it is some, not all) grow a thick skin in order to protect themselves. Perhaps the dragon scales that patients sometimes see are more of a reflection of the way receptionists are treated than of them as people. If you are relentlessly bombarded with insults surely it is only natural that a defence mechanism builds up, and that being told you’re useless results in a lack of enthusiasm when dealing with your 50^th phone call that day. It is very hard to remain breezy and full of smiles when all you see are unhappy faces, who cannot understand why you can’t immediately give in to their every demand.

This is not a piece about how to make things better for reception, because until the public change their attitude to these women, because on the whole women tend to make up most reception teams in GP land, then we will never make it a truly enjoyable job. Don’t get me wrong it isn’t doom and gloom all the time, but I must admit that particularly since the beginning of covid, our reception team seem to be given more and more of a hard time.
So much for clap for the NHS, now we’re a couple of years in people forget that without receptionists, there would have been no vaccine clinics. Without reception, the practice simply could not run.

This piece is written purely to acknowledge what receptionists do, and the fact that they do it for very little in the grand scheme of things.

If you can, and where you can, remind your reception team just how much you appreciate them. It could be making them a coffee when you know they haven’t had time to leave their desk or buying them some treats on a Friday to end the week with a bit of a sugar rush. Or even, simply thanking them for everything they do.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own stress in such a relentless job as this, but we aren’t the only ones working hard. Receptionists do not deserve the public reputation they have, and so now, right now, as soon as you’ve finished reading this, I want you to go and tell your team just how much you appreciate them for everything they do.

Here’s to you, the GP receptionists of the UK, I take my hat off to you all. Thank you.

New Year, Hell Yeah!

Written by: Craig Arnott

The Dene Team is delighted to announce that from this afternoon (05/01/2023), Dene Healthcare has officially joined the Rocialle Healthcare family!!!

 

Rocialle are a UK leader in single use surgical instruments and, like Dene, prioritise their focus on achieving outstanding service and value for the UK healthcare market.

 

A little bit about Rocialle:

•           Formed in 1977, Rocialle Healthcare has been a trusted supplies partner for over 40 years.

•           Their South Wales head-office (Ty Mynydd) incorporates on-site sterilisation facilities and one of Europe's largest medical cleanrooms.

•           From their 130,000 sq. ft, purpose-built distribution centre (Parc Agility) they regularly deliver vital products and services to virtually every hospital in the UK.

•           Their core product offering includes single-use instruments, procedure packs, medical packs,  PPE, and wound care.

•           In addition to supplying primary care trade distributors, in 2022 they created the Rocialle PracticeCare division to serve GP surgeries with a complete portfolio of medical equipment, consumables and pharmaceuticals.

•           Rocialle also acquired MidMeds Limited in October-2022.

 

The whole team at Dene Healthcare are thrilled to have teamed up with Rocialle and we are looking forward to continuing our mission of adding efficiencies and time savings wherever we can to allow General Practice valuable additional resource to focus on patient care.

 

There will only be one immediate to change to Dene Healthcare with our Managing Director and Founder, Michael Drakard announcing his retirement at the end of March 2023.

Our Commercial Director Craig Arnott said: “We would like to take this opportunity to thank Mike for believing in the team at Dene and allowing us all the opportunity and freedom to prove ourselves under his leadership.  He will be missed immensely, but we will continue to target fulfilling his mission in supporting General Practice wherever we can.  We would also like to express our gratitude in finding and partnering with Rocialle before his retirement.  We are looking forward to enjoying the future with Rocialle as we have the past with Mike!”

It is not a priority!

Written by: S.Apone

I’d like to take a moment to consider the phrase it’s not a priority.

Being a practice with more than one site, it can be difficult to manage teams who are split geographically, and it can be even more of a challenge as a PM. You’re the go-to person when something goes wrong, the one who can solve the problems, and the one who doesn’t flap, right?

The truth is that this isn’t always the case. We as PMs are as capable as the next person of getting into a strop about our workload and sometimes, when for the fourth time that day you’re met with a question about a dodgy printer, you might snap and grumble something about not getting a moments peace, but we must, as the leaders of our teams take a step back at times and consider the consequences of our words.

Recently, a supervisor at one of our sites was telling me that she had been upset by the response of a senior manager when she, the supervisor, required some assistance.

To give a bit of background, the supervisor was trying to organise transport of covid vaccines and the accompanying stock to one of our sites. She had called the surgery holding the vaccine and asked if she could drive over and collect the jabs ready for a clinic the following morning. The only thing she asked of the manager was whether the stock was ready to collect. The manager, who was undoubtedly busy had snapped back that it wasn’t a priority, and the supervisor was, to my mind at least, understandably put out by this reply. No matter how busy the manager was, it was not a kind reply. The supervisor had spent the day working her socks off cancelling clinics for a GP off sick, covered on reception for someone on annual leave and had come in the previous evening well after hours because of a problem with the alarm, and now she was being told that something that is actually pretty important was not a priority.

If those at the top can’t see why this is a problem, then I would ask you to consider what I believe to be the single most important piece of advice I have ever been given as a manager. Imagine at all times that your staff are wearing signs around their necks, each of which read ‘make me feel important’. I guarantee that if you employ this tactic at work, you will have a happier team, who are never made to feel small or insignificant.

The NHS are losing staff in their thousands, and we need to be mindful of the way we treat our people if we want to keep them. The phrase its not a priority does nothing more than make a member of staff feel like their stress is unimportant to you as their manager. It is not impossible for a comment like this to become the proverbial straw that broke the camels back, the final blow that makes an employee consider their options and decide whether or not they want to continue to work for you.

It's a lonely place at the top, made lonelier if you can’t retain a good team of people around you. You are much less likely to achieve this if you do not guard your words closely. Think about the impact that words barked in frustration can have on the people who are on the ground. Receptionists in particular who are the backbone of our industry should always be spoken to with kindness and gratitude. I’m not saying that you cannot reprimand your team when things go wrong, because for us all a part of management is monitoring performance, but we can do this with kindness as well.

I do not believe that people do a bad job on purpose; I believe that in general, if you train people correctly and give them the tools, they need to perform their roles then they will do their work without much interference. I also believe that if you are good to your team, they will do even more. They will go above and beyond because they know that their work isn’t going unnoticed. It’s a simple message, but one that we should all try and remember. Be kind to your team, because you have no idea what anyone is going through, and it may be that your harsh reprimand or comment becomes the thing that finally tips them over the edge. It may be that comment that causes them to take less pride in their work, or even start the hunt for a new job and new managers who will treat them better.

The supervisor I referred to earlier is a work horse, and whilst I will not name her here, I would like to dedicate this blog to her. It’s a good job that when she was called at 9pm on a Friday night by the cleaners who were struggling to set the alarm she didn’t respond with it’s not a priority otherwise the senior manager would have found herself having to drive for an hour to sort it out

The wellbeing of our teams should always be our priority because without them, we would be out of the job.

Covid Clinics - A Carnival Atmosphere in an otherwise bleak week!

Written by: M Fletcher

I know my colleagues may not share this sentiment, but I LOVE working weekend Covid and Flu clinics. Have I had a bit too much coffee? Or too little sleep? Have I finally succumbed to the pressure of working in Primary Care in 2022 and cracked? Nope, I really do mean it. Covid Clinics have been a recent highlight at an otherwise bleak moment in time for the NHS.

All I seem to read are negative and worrying articles about GPs only working part time, or how long it takes to see a doctor, or nurse strikes or drug shortages…it’s all a bit doom and gloom and I personally am tired of hearing nothing but GP bashing from patients, the public in general and the media. And that brings me to the subject of weekend Covid/Flu clinics.

Every day with out fail I deal with someone grumbling about the practice – it could be a patient wanting to complain, a staff member feeling overworked and pressured, or a PCN level meeting where, you guessed it, everyone has something to whinge about. It’s a difficult time in GP land right now, and we must find some balance, because if we allow the negativity to penetrate us as managers it will inevitably filter down through the ranks and everyone will be walking around with a face like a slapped backside.

This is why weekend covid clinics are such a positive in my mind. We don’t work a full day, and all we do is vaccinate. Clinicians only jab, they don’t answer any clinical questions or have time to just look at this thing on my back, and patients understand the appointment is just a quick in and out. We open reception but make it very clear that all we are doing on a weekend is running the clinic; no appointment booking, no queries, just vaccinating.

There are patients who I have seen grumbling at the desk on a weekday, who appear happy as Larry on a Saturday morning, they joke and have a giggle with the team and even thank us when they leave.

During the last clinic I laughed until my eyes watered when a patient, having overheard a conversation I was having with a receptionist about Halloween, said goodbye and imitated a zombie as he walked past. It was really, genuinely funny, and the patient (who I would estimate to be in his late 70s) was clearly happy at having made us all chuckle. It was fun – a genuinely fun morning working with a few colleagues and providing a service that, on the whole, our patients really appreciate.

Every single one of them left with a smile and a thank you, and I left work not begrudging the fact that I had lost the majority of my Saturday but feeling as though we had done something worthwhile and positive for our patients.

For reception staff in particular, who take so much flack it is a lovely experience, and they appreciate every positive comment and every word of gratitude.

Last year, during a Saturday covid clinic in early November, we realised that the radio wasn’t working properly. Faced with a choice of a free CD listing the most popular hits by Elgar or several festive albums, we decided to get in the Christmas spirit early, and we watched as patients queuing for their vaccines started dancing along to the tunes. It was like the scene in the Full Monty, for anyone who remembers that fabulous film.

For whatever reason, there is always a sense of fun at these clinics, a feeling that on these days patients leave their grumbles behind, and likewise staff get to come in and concentrate on one job and one job only, the task of protecting our patients and even better, doing it with a smile. We make sure that staff get a proper break mid way through the clinic, we order in bacon butties and I make sure that the one member of staff who is a secret smoker gets to go and pick them up so she can fit in a crafty fag break. We make sure everyone has a brew when they need one, and that we all leave on time allowing everyone to enjoy the rest of their weekend.

We are very good at organising and running flu clinics in general practice, and I used to love standing in the atrium of our surgery watching the snake of people moving through the building when we used to do walk in afternoons. It was a very impressive sight seeing hundreds of people being vaccinated like clockwork, walking in one door, joining a queue, being called for a vaccine and then leaving via the back. Once Covid hit we had to rethink the way that the clinics ran, considering social distancing and the time it would take to talk patients through the questions on pinnacle etc. but we have gotten very good at this too.

Our clinics now run like a military operation. We get everything (with the exception of the vaccine) ready the day before, the morning of the clinic we arrive, dole out the stock, make everyone a brew and once we’re all drawn up and ready to go, the doors open. It is a slick operation that has developed over the last couple of years, and I’m so proud of our team for continuing to give up their weekends to protect our patients. I’m even prouder of what these clinics have become; a fun way for the team to earn a bit of extra money and to receive the positive and grateful feedback from patients that they so deserve.

I hope that it is the same for my colleagues across the country, and that you too feel the positivity radiating from patients who, because of you, will feel protected this winter.

Covid is something we will just have to live with; for us in GP land organising vaccine programmes creates a lot of work and a lot of stress. But for those few hours, where all you can do is vaccinate, it doesn’t feel so bad. In years to come, we will be proud of our contribution, but for now, I’ll settle for dancing to Christmas music with the patients we serve, and occasionally seeing a man nearing 80 years old pretending to be a zombie as he wishes me all the best for the rest of my weekend.