READY FOR CHALLENGE
Nurse practitioners, family practice nurses in place next month.
Dena Edwards says being a nurse practitioner allows her independence in diagnosing and caring for patients.
The Howie Centre native graduated from the Cape Breton University nursing program and went on to receive her masters degree through Dalhousie University.
She now works at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital emergency department but by the end of May she will begin working as a nurse practitioner at a collaborative care clinic in Sydney.
“I think working in the emergency department opens your eyes to the issues people have with access in the community,” Edwards said. “I love that you get to keep the holistic nursing approach, all while caring for your patient and looking at the patient as a whole and providing improved access to care and continuity of care with the patient.”
Collaborative clinics allow different providers to work together and determine what approach would best serve a patient, Edwards said.
“If someone you feel might fall outside your scope of practice, you have a collaborative physician that you can consult,” she said. “Nurse practitioners can diagnose illnesses, they can order tests, if someone needs to be referred to a specialist … nurse practitioners are able to do that, order bloodwork, order diagnostic tests such as X-ray, CT scan.”
Last September the province announced it would spent $3.6 million to hire 22 additional nurse practitioners and family practice nurses, including seven to serve communities around Cape Breton. They were to allow additional people to have access to primary health care.
On Wednesday, during an event at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, SydneyWhitney Pier MLA Derek Mombourquette announced the new nurses to serve the Cape Breton communities of Sydney, Port Hawkesbury, Eskasoni and Cheticamp are all to be in place by the end of May.
Kathy Bell, director of primary health care, chronic disease and family practice with the Nova Scotia Health Authority, acknowledged the rollout of those positions has occurred more slowly than originally intended.
“Since then we were able to look collectively across the province as to what our needs were in different places, there was the announcement in the fall of additional money, so what we’ve been able to do is go back to the drawing board a little bit and we’ll have two teams in Sydney and a team in Port Hawkesbury, Eskasoni and Cheticamp,” Bell said. “That slowed us up a little bit but I think the results are exactly where we need to be.”
Bell said in total there will be 14 teams in 12 communities across Nova Scotia.
Dr. Steven MacDougall of Island Family Health Care said that centre will have a nurse practitioner and family practice nurse join its practice. He said the collaborative model allows for better use of precious health-care resources. If a patient required an area of care best provided by him he could provide it, but if it could be done by another professional like a nurse practitioner, it could free up his time to care for other patients.
“It’s not that we would each work in our own silos … we would each have our own attributes that we could combine,” he said. “For instance, if someone came in to manage a chronic disease, that may be best met with the nurse or nurse practitioner in terms of watching their diabetes or heart disease, checking their blood pressure, really a lot of things, but there are certain things that I would be more used to doing, perhaps certain types of diagnosis, managing certain types of diseases. Each person would have their strengths.”
Mombourquette said the province is attempting to make the best use of the health-care infrastructure available.
“Nova Scotia’s population is getting older and our healthcare needs are changing,” Mombourquette said.
Anyone in the communities or surrounding areas who needs a primary care provider can register with Nova Scotia Health Authority’s provincial list at need a family practice. nshealth.ca or by calling 811, Monday to Friday between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. The practices will call those on the list as they start taking on new patients.