Our story
Our story began in 2019 in a GP practice in Staffordshire. We noticed that although the practice was thought quite highly of in the local area, we were receiving lots of negative comments and reviews about our reception team. At first, we were convinced that this couldn't be true - we had a nice group of staff that seemed to be good at their jobs.
We started listening to calls, and observing our admin team. Common themes started to crop up and it soon became apparent that there were significant issues with communication skills and knowledge. Some of our staff had been at the practice for many years and some had been there for only a few months, but this didn't seem to make any difference.
After much pondering, we realised that the issue was of course...training. There was NO training programme in place. In fact, most of the newer members of staff were routinely put on the phone within a couple of days of starting the job after a quick 5 minute chat with a more 'senior' member of staff. The rest of the so called 'training', again involved a member of staff who had been at the practice for a while, showing the new member of staff how to do the job.
We realised something had to change, so we developed a very simple training programme based mainly on communication skills. We started seeing improvements and before long the reviews improved. Our receptionists were no longer known as the 'dragons' of the practice and they actually started getting lots of positive feedback. They started to actually enjoy the job.
From this point forward we made it our mission to further improve the training of our admin team. We then realised we were not alone. Neighbouring practices had the same issues, practices all over the country had the same issue and it became our mission to not just help our own team and the patients that we served but also practices up and down the country.
It was at this point that we realised that we needed to develop our training programme further, and that is what we have been doing ever since.
We set out on our mission to rid general practice of the 'dragon behind the desk' receptionist stereotype by helping practices improve their admin staffs skills, knowledge and confidence.
We started listening to calls, and observing our admin team. Common themes started to crop up and it soon became apparent that there were significant issues with communication skills and knowledge. Some of our staff had been at the practice for many years and some had been there for only a few months, but this didn't seem to make any difference.
After much pondering, we realised that the issue was of course...training. There was NO training programme in place. In fact, most of the newer members of staff were routinely put on the phone within a couple of days of starting the job after a quick 5 minute chat with a more 'senior' member of staff. The rest of the so called 'training', again involved a member of staff who had been at the practice for a while, showing the new member of staff how to do the job.
We realised something had to change, so we developed a very simple training programme based mainly on communication skills. We started seeing improvements and before long the reviews improved. Our receptionists were no longer known as the 'dragons' of the practice and they actually started getting lots of positive feedback. They started to actually enjoy the job.
From this point forward we made it our mission to further improve the training of our admin team. We then realised we were not alone. Neighbouring practices had the same issues, practices all over the country had the same issue and it became our mission to not just help our own team and the patients that we served but also practices up and down the country.
It was at this point that we realised that we needed to develop our training programme further, and that is what we have been doing ever since.
We set out on our mission to rid general practice of the 'dragon behind the desk' receptionist stereotype by helping practices improve their admin staffs skills, knowledge and confidence.
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