parkrun practices

Course: parkrun practices | RCGP Learning

• Four easy steps to becoming a parkrun practice

  • Contact your local parkrun and have a chat with the volunteer team
  • Register your surgery as a parkrun practice
  • Start signposting patients and staff to parkrun
  • Take part and have fun as a walker, jogger, runner or volunteer
    

  
  

  Register as a parkrun practice

  Map of parkrun practices
• What is parkrun?

  A community based physical activity charity with more than 125,000 weekly participants in the UK

  • 5k parkrun events every Saturday morning in areas of open space
  • 2k junior parkruns for 4-14 year olds and their families every Sunday morning
  • Over 1,000 locations around the UK
  • All events are delivered by local volunteers
  • All events are entirely free to take part in
  • parkruns are not races and there is no time limit - people can walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate
  • parkrun is open to all
  • They are suitable for the whole family to take part in

  All participants should register with parkrun beforehand, and bring their personal barcode to the event. There is a dedicated support site with FAQs, or alternatively people can contact the local event team using the contact details on the event’s website.

  Register for parkrun

  Why become a parkrun practice?

  Under this initiative, GP practices of all sizes are encouraged to develop close links with their local parkrun events to become ‘parkrun practices’.

  Being a parkrun practice helps you to:

  • improve the health and wellbeing of practice staff and patients, reducing the need for lifelong medicine
  • support the move towards personalised care and social prescribing
  • strengthen connections with the local community
  • improve staff morale, relationships between staff members and with other local practices
  • have a conversation with your staff, patients, and community and get them involved in a positive community activity
  • achieve high CQC ratings and improved patient satisfaction scores, as well as being great for your appraisals and PDPs

  How do we become a parkrun practice?

  The parkrun practice initiative is a voluntary collaboration between a GP practice and a local parkrun event, with the practice making a commitment to promoting parkrun.

  Before registering to be a parkrun practice, we ask that you reach out to your local parkrun event team, via the contact details on the event website, or go along to your local parkrun event to introduce yourself and let them know your practice is interested in registering to be a parkrun practice.

  Locate your local parkrun

  Many practices are lucky to have more than one parkrun event nearby, so you may have the opportunity to link with more than one. It is however important that you contact the team for each event.

  Once you have spoken to the team and have their agreement, you can now register your practice here. It only takes a couple of minutes, and any member of practice staff can register. It is useful if one staff member acts as the principal contact for the initiative.

  You can find a range of resources below to help you have a conversation with your staff, patients, and community, get everyone involved and join in the parkrun fun! Being a parkrun practice really doesn't take up much time, and there are huge benefits to getting involved!

  If there is not yet a parkrun event nearby, you could emulate Sloan Medical Centre in Sheffield and start one.

  Start your own parkrun event

• Testimonials

  GP staff and patients up and down the country have spoken about the positive benefits of being a parkrun practice and participating in parkrun. This has been substantiated by research, with academic papers being published in the British Journal of General Practitioners (BJGP) and in Health and Social Care in the Community. The following testimonials provide a flavour of how the parkrun practice initiative is being implemented and is impacting the health and wellbeing of staff and patients in a multitude of ways.
  

  "We are a parkrun practice and we think it's a great thing! The name (parkrun) is a little misleading as you don't have to run, you can walk too. There is a volunteer role called a parkwalker to encourage more walkers to attend parkrun. I would urge you to go along and watch one in your local park so you can see what it's all about. As well as getting people to be more active, there is a lot to be said for volunteering and feeling part of a community. We recently did a volunteer takeover where we got lots of our staff and our PPG involved in volunteering. One of our PPG members has volunteered nearly every week at parkrun since!"
  

  Fran
  Practice Manager at Harbourside Family Practice

• Dr Abbie Brooks

  "I love being able to talk about parkrun in my consultations..."

• Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi

  "Whether it is volunteering, walking, running or spectating, parkrun is a fantastic social ...

• Patient testimonials

  "It’s such a lovely experience to be running through the park on a Saturday morning, feeling the ...

• Resources for your practice and patients

  Material to promote parkrun to your surgery staff and patients online and in your practice.

• parkrun practice toolkit

  Full of ideas for activities to help promote the initiative.

• Certificate to display in waiting room
• Poster/Flyer
• Social media resources
• Patient card
• Digital screen graphics
• Email signature
• Press release template

  Share your practice's involvement in the parkrun practice initiative

• SMS template

  You might want to consider sending patients an SMS message, through AccuRx, about parkrun.
  

• Contact

  For parkrun related queries please contact support@parkrun.com
  

  For parkrun practice or RCGP related questions please contact activepractice@rcgp.org.uk