Interesting. I happened to be auditing this this afternoon as my nursing
team had made a request for a further electric kit.
11000 patients, 243/year have syringing, 417 total episodes per year.
Some disparity between the registered doctors reflecting personal list
demographics and individual GP global outpatient referral rates. Mine
relatively low but higher than I thought.
GMS contains NO funding for nursing tasks like dressings, which I would
consider non-medical, but ear-syringing has arguably been a GP task
delegated to nurses, like smears, vaccinations etc..
Some areas have treatment-room LESs. We don't. Our HCAs do some of the
procedures. I am considering trying to increase the numbers of ear-wax
treated with softeners alone, and increasing referrals to the local
GPwSI micro-suction services, because of the overall pressure on the
practice.
On 14/05/2014 20:40, Saul Galloway wrote:
> We are looking at the amount of practice nursing time we devote to ear
> syringing which is surprisingly large.
>
> Is an ear syringing service is required under a core GMS contract.
>
> I would suggest that it is not for the following reasons :-
>
> 1. There is no requirement for GPs to employ a practice nurse.
> 2. GPs themselves would not normally perform ear syringing as part of a
> 10 minute appointment.
> 3. Patients with ears blocked by ear wax are not unwell, and this cannot
> therefore constitute an "essential" service under the core contract. An
> equivalent issue might be a nail cutting service which would not be core
> work in GP either.
--
Regards,
Stephen Meech
Vice-chairman Kent LMC
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