Skill mix and patient trust in general practice

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Charlotte Paddison, who is currently non-executive director at Royal Papworth Hospital, and formerly a Senior Fellow and co-lead for Primary Care at the Nuffield Trust.

Title of paper: Implications of skill-mix change in general practice: secondary analysis of data from the GP Patient Survey

Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0360

To the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have investigated the impact on patient trust or perception of needs met when patients are unsure what type of health professional they have seen. Using data from a large national survey, this study found that patients expressed lower confidence and trust, and were less likely to report their needs were met in general practice consultations when they were not sure who their appointment was with. The results are novel in demonstrating that the combination of not knowing who you saw and a remote appointment is particularly problematic for patient trust.

Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A

00:00:01.600 - 00:00:58.530

Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for taking the time today to listen to this podcast.

In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Charlotte Patterson, who is currently non Executive Director at Royal Papworth Hospital and formerly a Senior fellow and co lead for Primary Care at the Nuffield Trust.

We're here to discuss the paper she's recently published here in the BJGP titled Implications of Skill Mix Change in General Practice Secondary Analysis of Data from the GP Patient Survey.

So, hi, Charlotte, it's really lovely to meet you and to talk about your work and I just really wanted to start by exploring how we know that the composition of the general practice team is evolving with the increasing scope of multidisciplinary work. Really? And I wondered if you could just give us some of the context for this work and what you wanted to do here.