What might a typical day look like?

I wake up, fall out of bed…. (Couldn’t resist the Beatles reference!) at about 6:30am and after my morning ablutions and breakfast, enjoy a wonderful drive through the Sussex countryside to Foundry’s Anchor Field site, where I am mostly based.

On arrival, I sit at my desk and engage in ‘paper work’ duties, checking results, letters, signing prescriptions and dealing with patient care related tasks sent to me by other team members. At 8:30am clinicians and key members of the admin team from across Foundry’s sites log on for a Teams meeting to discuss any particular challenges for that day.

The next part of my day consists of telephone and face-to-face appointments, which are a mix of those pre-booked and those booked on the day. This goes on till around 12:00pm. Further time is spent on administrative tasks such as signing prescriptions and results, for half an hour. At 12:30pm we then have a ‘huddle meeting’ of all the GPs usually based at Anchor Field to discuss any interesting clinical cases or issues and divide up any home visits which have arisen.

The middle of the day consists of home visits and teams meetings to discuss clinical and management areas. Lunch is usually consumed at my desk whilst dealing with administrative tasks. I always aim to stretch my legs for a quick break.

Afternoon surgery duties start around 2:30pm and consist of further telephone calls and face-to-face appointments. These can finish around 5:15pm but often goes on nearer to 6pm. After Surgery there is usually more paperwork to finish off and I usually leave on average at around 6:30pm. (Although this can vary!)

The above is a ‘typical day’ but our clinical days are broken up into half day sessions which can vary to include, in my case, Diabetes Clinics, as well as Anima sessions, providing care to patients whom have submitted medical requests online and Acute care sessions at the Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), providing on-the-day care to our patients and supporting the UTCs Advanced Nurse Practitioners. Some sessions here can start later at 10am and go on until 8pm.

Qualities in quantities

Hard-Working, Resilient, Optimistic, Good humoured

Highs and Lows

Highs – Building relationships with patients through regular contact, seeing them through their journey and improving their health outcomes.

Lows – On occasion, feeling overwhelmed by the workload.

Message in a bottle

A GP is just a cog in a big machine, they couldn’t function without an excellent team.

They constantly try to balance a speedy response to urgent problems and the benefit of seeing the right clinician – continuity is something GP’s treasure as much as patients.