I'll be honest with you. When I first saw National Practice Manager Day on my calendar, I did what I suspect most of you did too — I smiled, thought "that's nice," and then got on with the seventeen other things I had to deal with before nine o'clock. But this year, with the 21st of April coming around, I actually want to stop, even just for a few minutes, and say what I don't think we say to each other nearly enough: what we do is extraordinary, and I am so glad I'm not the only one doing it.
Nobody really understands our job — except us
I've tried to explain my role to friends and family over the years. I've watched their eyes glaze over somewhere between "workforce planning" and "ICB contract compliance." And honestly? I get it. From the outside, practice management sounds like admin. What they don't see is the 7am phone call about a clinician who's called in sick, the patient complaint you have to handle with compassion while internally working out how to restructure the afternoon appointments, or the way you somehow hold the emotions of an entire team together during the hard weeks. We are so much more than the job description, and we know it — because we live it.
"We don't just run practices. We hold them together, heart first."
The moments that remind me why I love this work
There are days — you know the ones — where everything that could go wrong does. But then there are the other days. The moment a patient grabs your arm on the way out and just says "thank you, I don't know what we'd do without this place." You weren't even involved in their appointment, but somehow it still fills you up. Or the quiet drive home on a Friday when you realise — actually, that thing you've been pushing for months? It's working. Nobody's noticed yet, but you have. Those moments don't make it into our appraisals, but they live in us. They're the reason most of us are still here.
We carry a lot — and that deserves to be said out loud
We sit with things we can't always share. The worry about whether the books will balance this quarter. The 2am thought about a staff situation you're not sure how to handle. The bigger, heavier fear about what the future of general practice even looks like — and whether we can protect our teams from the worst of it. And then we walk through the door the next morning and get on with it, because that's what we do. That takes a particular kind of strength. Real, quiet, underappreciated strength. So on the 21st, I just want to name it — because you deserve to hear it.
Here's what I hope for all of us
I hope that on the 21st you take five minutes that are genuinely yours. I hope you connect with another practice manager — whether that's a message, a coffee, or just a knowing nod across a room — because our community is one of the most supportive I've ever been part of. And I hope you feel, at least for a moment, truly seen. Because from one practice manager to another: you are doing an incredible job, in incredibly difficult circumstances, and this profession is better because you're in it.
Happy National Practice Manager Day — 21st April. We've got this.