GP and/or sexual health nursing in UK

[a_lee, BSN]

Wondering if anybody is working as an RN in either GP office or doing strictly sexual health? I'm a US trained nurse interested in community health and trying to learn more about nursing scope of practice in GP/community health in the UK in considering relocating. I'd be grateful for a chance to learn about your work, in this thread or via more direct messaging. Thanks in advance.

[DavidFR, BSN, MSN, RN]

Advice coming a little belatedly here and I stress I'm not doing this kind of work currently and have been gone from the UK 21 years, however I believe the situation is still as follows according to contacts I still have there.

Many GP practices do have nurses working there known as Practice Nurses. Depending on the GP the level of autonomy can vary. Larger practices rather than smaller surgeries tend to more frequently have Practice Nurses. Some Practice Nurses do the Nurse Practitioner qualification which of course leads to a higher level of autonomous practice.  If you search British university sites you will see there are multiple post-graduate qualifications in Community Health available.

District Nurses or Community Nurses are the nurses who provide homecare. That is a specialist qualification.

Sexual Health tends to be dealt with in specialist clinics often attached to large hospitals, sometimes know as GUM clinics (genito-urinary medicine)

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/sexual-health/what-services-do-sexual-health-clinics-gum-clinics-provide/

General nurses can work in these clinics, some with a specialist qualification in sexual health. These clinics also employ Health Advisors who would normally have some form of counselling qualification, but are sometimes ex-nurses with extra training in counselling.

Some Clinical Nurse Specialist rôles have overlaps in this kind of work. I was a CNS in Viral Hepatitis and my role brought its overlaps with sexual health and liason with sexual health clinics. I had a community component to my job: liaison with locaI drung dependency units, projects for sex workers and local GPs. I did a 2 weekly clinic in a GP surgery where they had an enormous number of HCV patients. Where necessary I occasionally did  home visits. I knew of other CNSs who had different remits (Blood Borne viruses CNS, Infectious Diseases CNS, HIV CNS, Hepatology CNS) all of whom had their overlaps with communuity work and/or sexual health.  

Have you contacted the NMC? Or tried directly contacting larger GP practices and GUM clinics?

It might be wise to embark in a new country in a general nursing job first, get the general feel of things and suss out the scene locally?

Good luck.