General Practice Assistant

General Practice Assistants (GPAs) play an important role in Primary Care, helping to ensure patient health and care is timely, efficient, and patient-centred. It focusses on supporting General Practitioners and the wider team in their day-to-day management of patients, specifically aimed at reducing the administrative burden, making best use of consultations and supporting those particularly vulnerable to isolation who are regular attenders at the practice.

The General Practice Assistant role (GPA) is an enhanced administrative role, with some basic, clinical elements and can be flexed to suit general practice requirements. However, any clinical duties undertaken must be covered by the practice governance and associated liability insurance/arrangements.

The full job description can be found on General Practice Assistant – elearning for healthcare (e-lfh.org.uk) and includes the following tasks:

• Sorting all clinical post and prioritising for the GP in terms of actions. Signposting some post to others such as clinical pharmacist etc.
• Extracting all information from clinical letters that needs coding and adding to notes.
• Arranging appointments, referrals, tests and follow up appointments of patients.
• Supporting GP with basic observations as required e.g., dipping urine, taking blood pressure, ECGs & phlebotomy.
• Completing basic (non-opinion) forms and core elements of some forms for the GP to approve and sign such as insurance forms, mortgage, benefits agency forms etc.
• Explaining treatment procedures to patients as requested by the GP.
• Helping the GP liaise with outside agencies e.g., getting an on-call doctor on the phone to ask advice or arrange admission while the GP can continue with their consultation(s).

Historically, most GPAs have been recruited in house which has supported retention and offered career progression opportunities for existing staff. They have predominantly come from reception, administration or healthcare assistant roles.