Celebrating Mater's Nurse Practitioners

14/Dec/2018     HealthMater GroupServices

This week Mater is celebrating the highly-skilled nurse practitioners at Mater who are transforming healthcare and the lives of their patients every day, as part of Nurse Practitioner Week.

In Australia, around one in 500 registered nurses are nurse practitioners – the most senior clinical nurses in our healthcare system.

Mater’s Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer Callan Battley said a nurse practitioner’s role expands on the traditional role of nurses.

“Nurse practitioners have the expertise and authorisation to perform physical examinations, order and interpret diagnostic tests, provide counselling and education, and write prescriptions.

“Their autonomous practice, in collaboration with specialty teams, assists in improving patient access and clinical outcomes, allowing specialists to meet the needs of more acutely ill patients in the community.”

Mater has six nurse practitioners working across the specialties of respiratory and cystic fibrosis, gastroenterology and heapatology, urology, chronic cardiac and heart failure, and neurology.

Peter Jones, Australia’s first Nurse Practitioner to train in epilepsy, said that thinking about the lives of his patients was the extra push he needed to become a Nurse Practitioner.

“The part I love about being a nurse practitioner is that you get time… when you really do need time in this specialty. I don’t have to limit myself to a certain amount of time per patient,” he said.

Peter said this role allows him to do all the things that made him want to be a nurse in the first place.

“In neurology you have to recognise the severity of the condition, know what to offer, know when to be realistic and be consistent. You’ve got to be a great detective. It is the fine detail that gives you the diagnosis, and that is what we push for: that proper, eloquent, tight diagnosis to give you the best care. The nurse practitioner can do that because our job is to follow through.”

Read more about Australia's first Nurse Practitioner in Epilepsy, Peter Jones.

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