Extra skills celebrated
WHEN it comes to nurse practitioners there is a lot more than meets the eye.
Darling Downs Health recently celebrated the role of nurse practitioners during Nurse Practitioner Week.
Darling Downs Health executive director nursing and midwifery services, Andrea Nagle, said nurse practitioners provided a vital link between medicine and nursing.
“The theme of Nurse Practitioner Week this year is ‘Much more than you know’ and that’s very appropriate given the specialised skillsets that nurse practitioners bring to the workplace,” she said.
“What a lot of people may not realise is that to be a nurse practitioner you must first be a registered nurse, then you train in a specialty area, then you do additional study to get your Master’s degree.
“This means in a busy environment like an emergency department, a highly trained NP can attend to cases needing an advanced skillset, which then frees up doctors to attend to more serious cases.”
Executive director of the Toowoomba Hospital Shirley-Anne Gardiner said nurse practitioners were a vital component in maintaining patient flow in busy facilities like Toowoomba Hospital.
“Once endorsed, an NP can, among other things, prescribe medications, order Xrays and diagnostics, and refer patients to specialists,” she said.
“So they provide a conduit between nursing and medical roles, and this helps enormously in keeping patient flow moving efficiently, in both ED and specialist outpatient settings”.
The first NPs in Australia were endorsed 19 years ago and there are now more than 1800 across the country.