Exploring the views and experiences of nurses who switched to general practice nursing from other roles

Abstract

Background General practice nursing is experiencing significant recruitment and retention challenges. Efforts have been made to attract newly registered nurses to general practice but there is still a workforce deficit. There is also a lack of research and initiatives around the recruitment of nurses new to general practice but who have experience in other areas of nursing. Aim To explore the views and experiences of nurses who had recently switched to a general practice nursing role after having worked in other nursing roles. Method For this exploratory qualitative study, the researcher conducted individual semi-structured interviews with four nurses who had switched to general practice from other settings within the previous two years. Findings All participants had chosen general practice because they wanted to support people to live healthy lives rather than care for people once they had become unwell. Despite access to training and mentoring, participants described feeling overwhelmed and lacking confidence. All of the participants emphasised the importance of interactions with the team to ease feelings of isolation. Conclusion General practices need to consider offering development opportunities and robust mentoring or preceptorship to nurses with experience in acute care settings who want to work in primary care.