GP receptionist induction checklist for practice managers
Medicine in Practice · 26 August 2026
GP receptionist induction new starter checklist practice manager care navigation onboarding
A new GP receptionist needs more than passwords and a tour of the building. Induction should connect the national role principles to the exact way the practice receives, records, routes and follows up patient requests.
Before the first patient contact
- Named supervisor and help route.
- Confidentiality, identity and safe-contact process.
- Clinical-system permissions matched to the role.
- Telephone, online, walk-in, email and text workflows.
- Emergency, safeguarding and staff-safety procedures.
- Accessible communication and interpreter arrangements.
Week one: understand the system
Explain the practice team, PCN roles, community services and who owns each type of request. Walk through the service directory and show what happens when a preferred route is unavailable. The learner should know where to find current information rather than memorising a list that will become stale.
Week two: shadow and rehearse
Use observed calls, anonymised workflow examples and fictional simulation. Practise identity checks, proxy requests, unclear online messages, duplicate contacts and an unaccepted handover. Make help-seeking visible and routine.
Week three: observed work
Observe a defined sample across channels. Record what the learner handled, the procedure used, feedback and any restrictions. Do not use online quiz scores as a substitute for seeing the person work in the local system.
Week four: authorise and review
Agree what can be handled independently, what must be discussed and what remains outside the role. Set a review date. A change in services, software, emergency processes or scope should trigger an earlier review.
Evidence to retain
Keep training completion, assessment and simulated performance separate from system training, supervised observation and local authorisation. This makes the record easier to explain during appraisal, incident review or inspection.
Use the 15-module Reception & Care Navigation programme as the structured learning component, then add the practice's own systems and procedures.