A call for urgent action to clean up legislative barriers faced by rural nurse practitioners was made at the recent Rural General Practice Network conference.
The network of rural nurses and GPs, lead by rural nurse specialist Kirsty Murrell McMillan, held its annual conference in mid-March attended by more than 320 delegates.
In a statement released following the conference, rural nurse practitioner members said current legislation was stopping them doing their job and treating patients effectively and efficiently.
An example was that currently only a GP could sign off a WINZ disability allowance form.
The statement said that the NPs “made their feelings clear” to the Minster of Health Tony Ryall during the conference’s political session. It said Ryall told the delegates that he “would go away and re-look” at the legislation.
The network NPs said they wanted legislative barriers removed “urgently” in line with the move towards integrated family health care centres and the general practice team approach to medicine and patient care.
“Nurse Practitioners are often the first line of health care, or work in collaboration with, or in some cases in the absence of doctors, in many rural and remote areas of the country,” the statement said. The inability to sign off a form that would give a patient access to not only treatment but services such as transport was causing “severe disadvantage to vulnerable people in rural communities”, NPs at the conference said.
The conference was also addressed by Kim Kranz, a senior executive of the home nursing agency Healthcare – one of the US’ largest in-home and community-based visiting nurse associations.
She addressed the conference about the effectiveness of its multidisciplinary home-help team and telehealth (in-home monitoring technology) in reducing hospitalisations and re-admissions of patients. The Pennsylvania-based service has more than 1000 employees.
