Every year thousands of students turn up to Newcastle and Gateshead for the first time, fresh faced and ready to start the next phase of their lives. It’s an exciting time and for many, the first time they’ve lived away from home. For those arriving from overseas, it can be challenging to understand all of the systems and processes both inside the university and within the UK as a whole.
One of these is our healthcare system. Navigating healthcare is tricky enough for someone who has grown up here but the important thing to remember is that, emergencies aside, for most of our healthcare needs, our local GP is the first point of contact. GP Practices can support us with a whole range of things and where they can’t, they act as a gateway to other specialist areas of care. With that in mind it’s easy to see just how important it is to make sure you’re registered with a local GP.
To help students make the choice that’s right for them, they need to get all of the information in one place at one time. In the past we have turned up on campus during Fresher’s Week, armed with maps, notices, posters, information sheets, registration forms and a whole team of student ambassadors. Over a busy two weeks we normally register anywhere between 5,000 to 6,000 students with a GP Practice of their choice.
As we all know, the arrival of Covid put an end to many events and activities and on-site Fresher’s Week was one of them. In one sense, the need had never been greater to register with a GP but in another it presented a huge technical challenge as we sat down to work out how we do that.
What we developed was brand new, innovative and highly effective: an online Student GP registration system that could link seamlessly with GP Practices in our area. Thanks to the support of the universities in promoting it to their students, we’re proud and pleased to say that 2021 was our most successful year ever. Well over 7,000 students have now registered with a local GP, that’s over 1,000 more than our best ever previous total.
For us this project is the perfect collaboration between ourselves, the universities, GPs and of course, the students. When we all put our heads together and work for the common.
