Pleasant Point & Nurse Practitioner
My first role as an NP was working as a locum in a very busy town based General practice. This was the first time I had ever worked in an urban practice. This was both daunting and challenging and I appreciated the support of other locums in the practice. Between this and the small GP clinic with less than 1000 patients that I had started working in part time, the role began to take shape. I started to identify what I would and wouldn’t do, where my boundaries were and when I needed to pick up the phone and ‘dial a Dr’.
After three months the smaller and more controlled environment of the Pleasant Point Practice won over and I took on a full time role there. The practice was owned by a GP and he also had a practice in Timaru. I worked 4.5 days at Pleasant Point and then for half a day we would “swap” practices and I’d go into the big town practice and he would see patients who I wanted a second opinion, were complex, or who particularly wanted to see a GP rather than an NP. We also met every week for 1-2 hrs of case reviews and this was incredibly helpful. No question was to stupid and I was extremely grateful for colleagial support and learned a lot.
After 18 mths of this model I had found my feet, defined my role, and felt ready to not only run the clinical side of the practice BUT actually own the business. The idea was further strengthened by my registered Nurse colleague in the practice who also loved the idea of owning the business. Long story short we bought the practice and continued to run it n the same way as previously with the previous GP owner’s input for a further four months. The difference was we employed the GP rather than him employing us.
Our need was to get regular GP cover 1-2 days a week for support, to see patients outside of my comfort and also to sign off all the “Medical Practitioner only” documents. As always happens… a fabulous GP came onto the scene and worked for us 1-2 days a week for us for 15 months. Again this provided me with the level of support I needed to ensure patients were seen by the appropriate clinician for their health care requirements. The GP had a special interest area and this was another asset to our practice and meant patients could be seen and investigations and treatments offered that they would otherwise have been referred to secondary care for. (eg, mirena, other IUCD insertions uterine biopsies)
October 2016 ***** B*O*O*M ****** life is unpredictable , and so it was! I became very unwell and was suddenly out of practice for 5 months. My return was part time, with gradual increases overtime as I tolerated bigger work load. This was a difficult time for all concerned. The locums who filled in over this time were what ultimately kept the practice going ( from a contractual point) as I would not have been able to do it without them as I was not able to work the hours needed to keep the practice going. The nurses, reception staff and the manager all had to dig deep to get through this difficult time. It took me a full 12 months to be able to cope with full time practice again. There were changes in staff during this time and for a range of reasons we (my husband and I) bought out my registered nurse partner and her husbands share of the business.
After a time of just putting one foot after the other and seeing that I could cope with being back at work full time we employed a new nurse two days a week and changed the management structure so that the lead receptionist became the manager and my husband stepped back from the day to day running of the practice. His main role became financial oversight, IT go-to man, builder and Director.