PCC have developed some training around recognising the value in your reception teams – details below …
Website article and details here …
Reception staff are the first contact patients have with any practice and potentially have a big impact on every patient’s experience of the care they receive.
Yet training opportunities for receptionists have historically been few and far between.
PCC has developed a training programme to remedy that. The series of half-day courses reflects the contribution reception staff can make in delivering several of the ten high impact actions set out in the GP Forward View (GPFV).
Our customer services programme includes three courses:
Effective communication
Care navigation and signposting
Smarter working.
The session can be shaped to the local circumstances and priorities of a clinical commissioning group (CCG) or group of practices.
PCC development adviser Carla Custons-Cole says: “Reception and admin teams have an integral and important role to play in the patient experience that can shape clinical outcomes. That’s why the NHS must get serious about supporting and training them. The development sessions are relatively informal and discussion-based with participants learning from each other as well as the speakers. We give hints and tips in steering them through the workshops.”
She adds that the sessions can also help reception staff to reappraise the value of their role.
“By illustrating just how reception and admin staff can help improve the patient experience – and relieve work pressures on clinicians – the sessions often become a celebration of their role, which has a positive effect on confidence and morale,” Custons-Cole says.
The care navigation and signposting session examines models of care navigation and the fundamentals of signposting and social prescribing. It then goes on to consider how roles within the reception and admin team can change to enable staff to deliver what they’ve learnt.
The effective communication course introduces reception staff to proactive engagement – including tips for active listening and effective questioning – and reacting to complaints or challenging encounters with patients. Participants also learn about the psychological elements of communication – such as having positive body language.
The training supports practices to implement at least three of the ten high impact actions that NHS England believe could relieve pressure on GPs: active signposting (directing patients, where appropriate, to other sources of help); social prescribing (referring patients to non-medical services in the community) and supporting self-care by directing patients to sources of information and support.
Custons-Cole says: “We’ve had great feedback from participants where CCGs have asked us to work with all their practices on a particular theme. Half the practices attend in the morning and half in the afternoon. That has allowed us to support reception and admin staff from up to 50 practices in a day.”
Find out more by emailing enquiries@pcc-cic.org.uk with “reception teams” in the subject.
Download the November 2017 issue of Commissioning Excellence
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