Nurse-prac­ti­tion­er value 

Di: Nurse prac­ti­tion­ers are high­ly trained. We’ve got Mas­ters degree; a min­i­mum of three years of post-grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence, but I think you would find most nurse prac­ti­tion­ers have way more than three years of post-grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence by the time they decide to take up the role.

You also have to have a min­i­mum of 5,000 clin­i­cal hours at advanced prac­tice before you can even be endorsed.

So, you go to Uni and you do your Mas­ters and you pass but that doesn’t guar­an­tee that you will become an endorsed nurse prac­ti­tion­er who can actu­al­ly work and get a provider num­ber. You have to pro­vide evi­dence to AHPRA that you meet the clin­i­cal criteria.

We’re able to pre­scribe, and order blood tests, X‑rays and ultra­sounds. We’re able to able to inter­pret the data that comes back from those tests, and we’re able to treat peo­ple accordingly.

Most of us in rur­al and remote areas are very good at man­ag­ing chron­ic con­di­tions because there are lots of chron­ic con­di­tions in rur­al and remote areas – as well as your nor­mal flus, cuts, and any­thing else that walks through the door.

Work­ing togeth­er to fill the gaps

Di: I think it’s time the Aus­tralian health sys­tem real­ly looked out­side the box to how things can be done dif­fer­ent­ly, while still meet­ing the needs of the com­mu­ni­ties in rur­al and remote areas. 

We know what the sta­tis­tics are like for our com­mu­ni­ties: the health out­comes are low­er in rur­al and remote areas because of the lack of access and time­ly access to appoint­ments and spe­cial­ist care. 

I’m so pas­sion­ate that [nurse prac­ti­tion­ers] are part of the solu­tion. We’re not the answer to it − we need GPs. 

I wouldn’t be where I am, and the stream­lin­ing of our prac­tice wouldn’t have been as smooth, with­out hav­ing [a trav­el­ling GP] onboard to be able to hand­ball things to and refer to when things are beyond my scope of practice. 

We don’t want to be mav­er­icks; we don’t want to be sep­a­rate from the sys­tem as it cur­rent­ly stands. And we cer­tain­ly don’t want to be at arm’s length to GPs, they’re our colleagues. 

We need one anoth­er to make the sys­tem work, and for it to work for our clients.