Here For Life

My name is Asha and I’m a general practice nurse.

I provide care across the full spectrum of society. I make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable, and that they see a friendly face providing their clinical care. I am passionate about helping people live well with long-term conditions and about driving preventative health.

I do this because I believe that access to healthcare in the community is really important.

I come from a family of nurses. Initially I went off to uni and did a different degree, then I started volunteering with children and then I realised that actually, nursing is what I wanted to do.

I used to work in A&E and loved it but I always knew care for patients doesn’t stop in emergency departments. Many people require treatment and care in community settings.

I work in general practice so that I can support people with conditions like diabetes, from when they are diagnosed and throughout their life. I can look after someone’s asthma and prevent them ending up in A&E – I can do preventative cancer screening tests and I know that’s making a difference, I know the immunisations I give are making a difference.

General practice nursing is a good area to be for career development. You can have new projects, new ideas for the community, which makes a job bit more interesting for me as a nurse. It means I can support patients, but I can also be discussing policies and looking into protocols and see if we can help the community and make a difference to getting people interested in their own healthcare management.

My overall style and approach to nursing is probably a friendly manner where I want to talk to everybody like I care about their lives, because I do. I think it’s very easy for a patient–clinician relationship to be very formal all the time and I don’t think that’s necessarily needed.

In my role it’s important to create a safe and calm environment so being friendly and welcoming is really important, even when people may receive sad news. I want all people to feel cared for with compassion and skill.

A large part of my role is health promotion so I work closely with the trainee nursing associate to make sure our public spaces within the surgery are really engaging and attract people to health and wellbeing promotion and initiatives.

From starting my career as a nurse I have really grown in confidence and skill – from treating someone with an asthma attack with the right medication in A&E, to managing somebody with high blood pressure in primary care. These are all part of my portfolio of skills. I am continually learning through my experience and continued professional development.

I am currently training to be an advanced clinical practitioner where I will be able to diagnose, treat and prescribe for my patients. I also train others in my team, for example, nursing associates and trainee healthcare assistants.

As a general practice nurse I’m delivering immunisations from babies to adults. I take people’s blood pressure, I take their bloods, I do wound dressings, I do smears, I reassure patients and make sure they understand what’s happening. But then a large part of my job is also about managing long-term conditions.

Many people have a long-term condition, such as diabetes, asthma, COPD, heart failure or hypertension, and a big bulk of my work is to look after those patients. To see them and make sure they know how to self-manage their condition. Talk to them about their diet, work out if we can look at weight management, work out if I can help them to stop smoking or to eat a little bit better. And hopefully help them improve their health.

Another really interesting part of my job is women’s health. Contraception, sexual health, and giving women the knowledge so they can choose contraception wisely and be confident in making their choice. I have the opportunity to support and empower women to improve and make decisions about their health.

Every single day in general practice is different. It’s vital to understand what’s important to people. This helps me to tailor the care for them. For example, the lady who is happy that her son has finally got a better place of care, and the man who is able to manage his long-term condition so he can go to the betting shop.

I love creating a safe and compassionate environment for people, especially when I know they are going to be nervous, for example, seeing their baby having an injection or someone having or receiving results of a blood test. The best part of the job is achieving good outcomes in a variety of circumstances.

I really enjoy the people I work with. We are a great team who support each other both professionally and personally. They are great colleagues and friends.

One of my biggest challenges, especially in central London, is that we see quite a lot of people who are homeless or just haven’t been dealt a very good hand in life. We provide care, compassion and support for people. We do all we can but I always wish I could do more.

One of the things that I’m most proud of is that in such a short space of time, the quality of my work has been recognised. And it’s meant that I’ve been put forward as Nurse Manager for two surgeries, responsible for 13,000 patients, and that I have been able to start my masters degree to become an advanced clinical practitioner.

By the end of my career, I hope to have achieved positive changes to practice. I hope to have a positive impact on policy that makes a real difference to patient care. I want to create something sustainable – something I’ve introduced and changed policies for. In 20 years’ time, I want to be on boards influencing the future of nursing.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.