Transforming Roles paper 6: role of the general practice nurse – 2024: equality impact assessment

Executive summary

The policy aim is to implement the refreshed Transforming Nursing Roles (now known as ‘Transforming Roles’) Paper 6, which sets out the role of the General Practice Nurse (GPN). The desired outcome is that the role of the GPN is aligned to this paper and that the support from employers and relevant competency based training is available to enable this to happen. A basic level of EQIA assessment was required for the publication, as it is designed to be generic enough to not unfairly target or discriminate those in the workforce who have protected characteristics. The EQIA found that there was no significant impact on any protected characteristics. The only potential issue would be around the GPN role in women’s health and how male GPNs may be perceived as being discriminated against if a female patient were to request a GPN of the same sex. However, this is justifiable given the essential nature of the GPN role and employers must consider accessibility of services, including the ability for patients to request to see or be treated by a healthcare professional of the same sex. It should also be noted that there is no data available on the demographic of sex of the GPN workforce, however the number of male GPNs is understood to be low at the current time.

General practices must already consider the accessibility of general medical services provision to ensure they are open and available to all.

The recommendation from the assessment focused on improving data collection on protected characteristics amongst the GPN workforce and for us to use ongoing monitoring of data and expertise to identify whether the policy implementation has any impact on the protected characteristics of the workforce.