Nurse Practitioners
Just noting the Federal Government's budget move approving prescribing rights for nurse practitioners.
No doubt some serious 'turf' wars and posturing to come, between the AMA, the major corporate GP practice operators and the entrepreneurial elements of the nursing profession.
It will be interested to see how the standard of care issues arising from this pan out. How will the standard of care to be expected of such practitioners be set? If less than the standard for a GP, how is this lower standard to be communicated to patients? How readily is such a practitioner to be expected to refer to a GP (given likely issues with referral rights to specialists or for expensive investigations {MRI etc))?
Yet another interesting aspect of the times we live in, and the ever changing dynamics of modern health care delivery
