The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) released the findings of a recent study on the primary care resources available to people living in rural areas of the country. The ANF report states that nurses are providing the bulk of primary care to rural Australians.
The ANF cites this report as the reason the Australian government should institute incentives for these rural medical professionals that encourage them to continue their nursing practice and build on their professional education. Also, their patients should be able to access government programs currently reserved for patients of physicians only.
Nursing care focuses more on prevention and healthy lifestyles. Because of this, according to the ANF, the care provided by these nurses is a more cost effective way for the health services and medicare to spend their funding.
Ms. Ged Kearney, National Secretary of the ANF spoke of one specific program in the article linked above.
“We know, for example, that a nurse led initiative in Mudgee in rural New South Wales is providing health services to men who were reluctant to visit a local GP. Since this service began in 2005 more than 1,246 men accessed MERV, more than one-third had not seen a GP for a full health check up within the past year.”
This is just another example of how a nurse’s unique focus on health care in their patient community can provide benefits not typically seen by similar patient care from a traditional medical approach.
