Dr. Diarmuid Quinlan:

GP nurses have a huge role in general practice. Most parents see that. They see their children getting vaccines and cervical smears and receiving chronic disease management. The nurses play a really important role. They are an integral part of our GP training programme for our GP workforce. However, we simply do not have anywhere near enough of them. I worked in the UK, where most practices the size of mine had five to eight general practice nurses working in them. Therefore, we need to increase very substantially the number of general practice nurses. We are working with some of the universities to deliver an education programme for nurses to facilitate their entry into general practice. With a modest resource, we anticipate that we could deliver a substantial cohort of new general practice nurses in 2023.