NHH celebrates its nurse-practitioners

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(L-R) Beverly Ryan-James, Karen Truter and Sheena Nelson, Nurse Practitioners supporting inpatient care at NHH.

By Cecilia Nasmith

The growing role of nurse-practitioners in Ontario's health-care system will be celebrated Nov. 10 to 16 during Nurse-Practitioner Week.

Of more than 3,700 NPs licensed to practice in the province today, eight of them currently provide care at Northumberland Hills Hospital.

While the full scope of the NP role might not be known to someone before becoming a patient, vice-president of patient services and chief nurse executive Susan Walsh said in the NHH press release, “this profession is instrumental to the health-care sector as a whole and, increasingly, to the delivery of care at NHH.

“NPs play a key role improving access to primary care, decreasing appointment wait-times, providing patient-centred care, and more,” Walsh said.
NPs are registered nurses with advanced education and training that allows them to provide primarh, acute and specialty health care in a variety of situations. This additional experience means Nps can be autonomous in providing a broad scope of services such as physical exams, ordering tests, diagnosing and treating illnesses, writing prescriptions and providing referrals. They are also involved with admitting patients to hospital, as well as discharges.

As the NP role expands across the province, it also grows at NHH – where NPs now work in both outpatient care in the Emergency Department and inpatient care in the Medical-Surgical Unit, Inpatient Rehabilitation and Restorative Care. Having NPs working in these departments fills a need for both patients and staff.

Even with the degree of autonomy with which they can practice, NP Sheena Nelson of the Rehabilitation Unit said, “we work within a collaborative model at NHH. We have an interprofessional staff and physician team filled with experts in different roles, who we can call on when needed.

“It's one of the benefits of working in the hospital environment.”

In the Emergency Department, their efforts help to reduce wait-times and help to ensure admitted patients are seen more frequently by acute and primary care givers.

ED patients are triaged into two streams, allowing less critical patients to be seen in a more timely manner by an NP in the Blue Zone (where an NP is now on duty between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily), while also ensuring staff and space are available for more critical patients to get to a stretchered location for treatment by a physician.

On the in-patient side, NPs reduce the pressure on the system by frequent monitoring of patients whose illnesses and injuries fall within their scope of work. By working closely with both the hospital team and area family physicians, the collaborative physician-NP model allows for better patient care for a growing number of admitted patients, ensuring they are seen frequently by a primary care provider and supported in an interdisciplinary environment.

NPs are also active at NHH beyond the direct patient care they provide, committing extra time to promote and enhance professional practice within the hospital, serving on committees, supporting program and policy development, and contributing to the advancement and oversight of quality care. They are also mentors for NP students, overseeing clinical placements at various times throughout the year.

In celebration of NP Week, information about the role NPs play will be on display in the space adjacent to the Main Street Bistro – with the Bistro itself decorated with messages from patients.
For more information on NPs in Ontario, visit www.npao.org.