HEALTH MINISTER SEES MODEL GP SURGERY IN PRACTICE

The Minister for Health and Social Services, Dr Brian Gibbons, was given a glimpse of the future of primary health care during a visit to a thriving GP surgery near Caerphilly.

Dr Gibbons saw at first hand the results of a unique collaboration between Caerphilly Local Health Board and Cardiff University which has created a busy practice in an area where, three years ago, recruitment and retention of GPs was largely unsuccessful.

The surgery he visited at Heol Penallta, Gelligaer, together with one in neighbouring Gilfach, now serve almost 5,500 patients thanks to a Welsh Assembly Government funded scheme, the Heads of the Valleys Project, introduced in 2003 to help revitalise primary care services in the Gwent Valleys.

The scheme has enabled the needs of community GPs to be linked with the resources of academia to provide an environment designed to attract and retain a highly motivated workforce and offer continuing professional development and training for the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Clinical lecturers from the Medical School in Cardiff, part of Cardiff University, now provide clinical services and help in training medical students and nursing students. An application for the training of GPs by the practice is to be submitted in the near future.

Research initiatives are also underway with the School of Medicine at Cardiff University which will, in the long-term, contribute to further improvements in primary care in the area.

Caerphilly Local Health Board Chief Executive, Judith Paget, said the surgeries had become such positive, sought-after places to work in, that the traditional recruitment problems of the last 25 or more years showed every sign of being overcome, breaking the cycle of low staff morale and poor patient services.

“We had a recruitment crisis in this area in 2003 - five practices in Caerphilly were vacant, and there was the prospect that, in some communities, GP services would not be routinely available,” she said.

“The additional funding provided by the Assembly has created a vibrant link from the Caerphilly Gwent Valleys to academia, with two Lecturers and a Professor of General Practice helping to deliver services to patients.

“The result is that the Gelligaer and Gilfach practices have been transformed, and patient services are now of the highest quality – and we’re now actively looking at an ongoing work programme to help other local practices develop in similar ways.”

Helen Houston, Professor of General Practice at Cardiff University, who has taken a joint leadership role in the project which was developed by Dr John Watkins, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology, said: "In the post-industrialised valleys of South Wales there are higher levels of morbidity and significantly greater health care needs when compared with the average population in Wales and the UK. However, it has been difficult to encourage much-needed doctors to come and work in this area.

"The Heads of the Valleys Project in Gwent develops a new model of health care, creating a very positive and exciting working environment in order to enhance medical recruitment.

"A combination of NHS and clinical academic posts is creating teams which deliver primary care services, contribute to the local health board and the wider primary care community and enable strong links with Cardiff University's academic department of General Practice.

"Since the project's inception in 2003, recruitment has been successful and progress in developing clinical services, and contributing to both research and teaching has been rapid. The potential to extend this scheme across the area now needs to be realised."

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