Health Education England are developing a new strategy which will see assistants’ assistants helping assistants reduce the amount of time they currently spend assisting.
The novel administrative role has been championed by the RCGP and a spokesman for the college told us: ‘Rather than looking at ways to reduce the amount of pointless paperwork, mindless bureaucracy and box ticking in general practice we thought it would be a good idea to just increase the number of people doing the pointless paperwork, the mindless bureaucracy and the box-ticking.’
We caught up with Becky, an assistants’ assistant from Croydon: ‘In my last job I counted bits of paper, folded them up and then screwed them up into little balls and tried to throw them in the bin. Sometimes I got them in the bin and sometimes I didn’t, I found it very rewarding. I think my skill set is easily transferrable to general practice. I have one question though – if an assistants’ assistant assists an assistant, what does an assistants’ assistants’ assistant do?’
Dr Kevin Hinkley is a GP in Edinburgh
