The importance of robust education in general practice

I have been reflecting on the first season of ‘This is Going to Hurt’, based on the book of the same name by Adam Kay (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0b6k5gx/this-is-going-to-hurt). The story centres on Adam Kay's experience of a being a junior doctor, in training to become an obstetrician. It shows, from Adam Kay's perspective, the pressures the NHS is under to meet demand and the pressures junior doctors can be under to work in such a pressured and stretched environment, while learning the specialism itself and teaching those more junior than themselves.

While the programme is for entertainment not information, it did make me consider the parallels with nursing, and specifically, the ways in which nurses in primary care learn their specialism, teach others more junior than themselves and all the while delivering on their own job in the pressured environment of general practice.

In the show, Adam Kay's character, faced with another impossible clinical decision for his level of experience, uses the phrase ‘see one, do one, teach one’ – an approach in nursing we have been trying to eradicate for decades. But we also know that teaching student nurses and colleagues less experienced than ourselves can be time consuming and is often the first aspect of our work to be deferred when patients are waiting for care.