North Hardwick & Bolsover Primary Care Network (PCN) is an NHS Collaboration between 7 GP Practices – Castle Street Medical Centre, Crags Health Care, Creswell & Langwith Medical Centre, Emmett Carr GP Partnership, Friendly Family Surgery, Shires Healthcare and Welbeck Road Health Centre. These practices are working together to provide extended services.

PCNs build on current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care. Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively providing care for the people and communities they serve. PCNs usually have a 30-50k population and are geographically contiguous.

Clinical Pharmacists

Clinical Pharmacists provide a number of clinical and administrative services including carrying out structured medication reviews for patients with ongoing health problems and improving patient safety, outcomes and value through a person-centred approach on behalf of the PCN.

www.northhardwickandbolsoverpcn.gpweb.org.uk/pcn-services/clinical-pharmacist-service

First Contact Physiotherapists

First Contact Physios allow patients to receive input from an expert in the first instance. First contact physiotherapy services provide advanced physiotherapy services which can manage and treat musculoskeletal problems which means you may not need to see a GP.

www.northhardwickandbolsoverpcn.gpweb.org.uk/pcn-services/first-contact-physiotherapy

Social Prescribers

Social Prescribing is a free holistic support service available to all patients 18yrs and over, that aims to improve health, wellbeing and environmental health, in a person centred way. Your Social Prescribing Link Worker will help you to explore and plan a pathway to help you lead a healthier lifestyle. They will help build confidence and motivation, promote behaviour change and set agreed goals to keep you on track.

Social prescribing can have a significant positive impact on environmental health:

1. Promotes Environmental Stewardship: By encouraging activities like community gardening, conservation projects, and nature walks, social prescribing fosters a sense of responsibility and connection to the environment.
2. Reduces Healthcare Demand: Social prescribing can reduce the strain on healthcare services by addressing social determinants of health. This can lead to fewer hospital admissions and GP visits, indirectly reducing the environmental footprint of healthcare services.
3. Supports Biodiversity: Activities linked to social prescribing often involve the creation and maintenance of green spaces, which can enhance local biodiversity and contribute to ecosystem health.
4. Encourages Sustainable Practices: Participants in social prescribing programmes often adopt more sustainable lifestyles, such as increased physical activity and reduced reliance on motorised transport, which can lower carbon emissions.

Overall, social prescribing not only benefits individual health and well-being but also contributes to broader environmental sustainability goals.

The following video produced by the NHS helps to explain what a social prescriber is and how they can help: https://youtu.be/Iyr5FRdiKv8?si=F0i_redlC1985G0z

www.northhardwickandbolsoverpcn.gpweb.org.uk/pcn-services/social-prescribing-service

Young Person’s Social Prescribers

This service is provided by a team of social prescribing link workers working for Chesterfield Football Club Community Trust.

They provide person-centred support to young people living in the Chesterfield, Bolsover and North Hardwick areas, who display behaviour that indicates they may:

• be socially isolated and lack social connections in the wider community
• have mild/moderate emerging mental health needs, such as anxiety or low mood
• have a high BMI and could benefit from support with managing their weight
• be at risk of permanent exclusion or NEET (not in employment, education, or training)

www.northhardwickandbolsoverpcn.gpweb.org.uk/pcn-services/young-person-s-social-prescribing-service