Receptionists reimagined: How online services are transforming the GP front desk

Today, we’re speaking to Dr Steph Stockwell, a senior analyst based at RAND Europe.

Title of paper: Evolution of the general practice receptionist role and online services: a qualitative study

Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2024.0677

The introduction of online systems and services into general practice and the impact on general practice staff has been considered from a clinician perspective, but comparatively little is known about how these introductions have affected the receptionist role. This study highlights that the use of online services is leading to an evolution of the general practice receptionist role. The role is becoming increasingly complex as practices use multiple online systems, which impacts demand management and navigation aspects of the role. Online systems have variable consequences on workload for receptionists, which has potential implications for workflow, consistency of task completion, job satisfaction, and retention and recruitment of these key staff members.

This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions.

Speaker A

00:00:00.320 - 00:00:53.350

Hello and welcome to BJJP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate Editors of the bjgp. Thanks for listening to this podcast today.

In today's episode, we're speaking to Dr. Steph Stockwell, a senior analyst based at RAND Europe.

We're here to discuss the paper she's published here in the BJGP titled Evolution of the General Practice Receptionist Role and Online Services A Qualitative Study.

So, hi, Steph, it's great to meet and talk about this work and one of the reasons I really wanted to talk about this is that I think it's timely work, given that we know there's an increasing emphasis just in general practice on triage and also the multidisciplinary team. You talk in the introduction of this paper just about the role of receptionists, which has been evolving and changing in recent years.

So just talk us through that a bit.

Speaker B

00:00:53.720 - 00:02:09.550

Yeah. So this work came about because we were doing some work for the wider de facto study, which was a.

An observational, mixed methods study that involved delete reviews, some surveys, ethnographic case studies and some interviews.

And it was whilst I was doing some of the ethnographic case study work that we spent a lot of time around reception staff because they were the ones who were doing most of the digital facilitation, which is the phenomena that we were. Were looking at. It was whilst doing these observations that the idea for this, this paper came to me, as, you know, often the.

The first point of call for, for patients making contact with general practice and they're really crucial for helping to manage that demand and facilitating patient access to care.

But during these observations, I noticed how the perception of what a receptionist did, particularly among patients and the public, was a little bit outdated and the array of technologies and platforms that they were having to manage and, and help patients use as well, was really sort of the stereotype of answering telephone calls.

So, yeah, the rationale for this work sort of came about on the back of that and it made me want to look back at some of the work that we did for the De facto study and to see what sort of impact the online services had on the role of GP receptionists.

Speaker A

00:02:10.030 - 00:02:50.390

Yeah. So you wanted to look, as you mentioned, just at the impact of online services on sort of the evolving role of receptionists.

And as you mentioned, you took quite an interesting and varied approach here.

So you did the ethnographic work that you mentioned, but you also did interviews with patients and staff and practices and the ethnographic work was really interesting. So you were actually sitting in eight different practices and observing what receptionists were doing.

But I want to really focus on what you found here and I think the first thing to talk about is that the receptionists had a really different and varied role between those different practices and even within the practice itself. So talk us through that.

Speaker B

00:02:51.170 - 00:03:43.630

Yeah.

So speaking to a couple of receptionists who'd been in the role sort of a longer time, they were reflecting in their interviews about how the role itself, from their point of view, having been in it for such a long period of time, has changed. Previously they would do sort of fewer and more repetitive type jobs, but now it's just so much more varied.

That's just one person within their role over a period of time.

But then we were noticing that receptionists within one practice and between the different practices, we went into what was conceptualised as a receptionist.

What the receptionist role looks like was very different and it was impacted by whether the practices had specific administrators, so people like reception clerks or IT officers, the number of different receptionists that were available and working on. On shift, and also the confidence and competence of each specific receptionist themselves.

Speaker A

00:03:43.950 - 00:04:02.830

Yeah, it's interesting you talk about experience and I think that probably a lot of people who work in general practice might reflect on that.

But talk us through what you found in terms of