Education and training
We are very focused on education and training and are one of only 15 Enhanced Training Practices (ETPs) in the North West. As member practices of the ETP we are accredited to offer placement opportunities for clinical professionals who are training to work in primary care. This includes Nurse Students, Physician Associate Trainees, Medical Students, Pharmacy Technician trainees, apprenticeships and work experience placements. We are also GP training practices for GPs in final years of training and to enable this our own GPs have undertaken extended training to support this. The advantages of this are that:
• This promotes careers in primary care and provides an opportunity to address workforce shortages
• It gives existing primary care staff an opportunity to train and develop their own careers, extending the skills based within general practice
• Provides opportunities for recruitment

Research
Clinical research is considered a core part of our daily activity at the Middlewood practices. All practices deliver a portfolio of academic and commercial clinical research activity in partnership with the NIHR (National Institute of Health Research) through our close links with the local GMCRN (Greater Manchester Research Network). Bollington Medical Centre, a Middlewood practice with 11,000 registered patients has a long history of involvement in clinical research spanning over 40 years. In 2016 the practice was awarded the status of Primary Care Research Centre of Excellence by the GMCRN in addition to winning in the best community research contribution category in the 2015 GMCRN awards.
For our patients this means early access to new innovative treatments that they may otherwise not have the opportunity to receive. There is also evidence that the patients of organisations delivering clinical research experience better outcomes. For our staff, delivering clinical research provides opportunities for continuing professional development and to contribute to the evidence base of the medicine we practice.

Primary Care Home
The four Practices became part of the National Association of Primary Care pilots for developing a Primary Care Home in April 2017. In simple terms a Primary Care Home is:
• A way of incorporating one multi-specialty team to work together, in one organisation with one budget.
• Care based on a geographically clustered population defined by the primary care registered list held by the GP Practice.
• Alignment of systems and process needed to deliver care for that place based population meaning that the Primary Care home becomes One system and One budget.

It is early days yet and much learning is required both in terms of how we align and manage our systems and processes but also about how we change both organisational and individual behaviours to enable this to happen. This is not a ‘quick fix’ but a transformational change that requires time, effort and commitment from all involved. Our Partnership believes that the Primary Care Home is the only way to provide high quality, integrated services fit for the future.