A New South Wales\u00a0minister says it “absolutely beggars belief” that a federal program to assist with GP recruitment trialled in the state\u00a0is\u00a0being expanded to Tasmania \u2014 but not to other NSW regions.<\/p>\n
Born in the Riverina town of Young, she still lives in the area and has worked as a nurse at a local medical clinic for the past four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Even though it’s tough and hard, it’s a rewarding job where you’re helping other people,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen the struggle [of] how hard it is to get health care out here.”<\/p>\n
Ms O’Reilly is running a nurse-led clinic at the Boorowa Street Practice, as part of a pilot scheme run by the Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network.<\/p>\n
Acute shortages<\/p>\n
The program’s expansion coincides with a nationwide shake-up of the profession that will eventually see registered nurses allowed to prescribe<\/a> medications.<\/p>\n It also comes at a time when many rural and regional areas are struggling to attract general practitioners (GPs)<\/a>.<\/p>\n The shortage has become so acute that many communities are offering incentives for GPs<\/a> willing to relocate, and there are lingering concerns about patients presenting at hospital emergency departments due to long waiting lists<\/a> for GP appointments.<\/p>\n Figures from the NSW Government’s Bureau of Health Information show that in the first half of this year more than 11,000 patients went to emergency department’s in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District seeking treatment for non-urgent medical issues.<\/p>\n Ms O’Reilly said the Hilltops region had a higher prevalence for diabetes than the national average \u2014 17 per cent of adults compared to 11 per cent nationwide \u2014 so the clinic had a logical focus.<\/p>\n “Bringing in a foot-care clinic just dedicated to diabetics in this region reduce[s] the chances of people losing limbs or heading to hospital” she said.<\/p>\n Ms O’Reilly said her role was to monitor and manage patients’ chronic health conditions.<\/p>\n “I do a lot of wound care \u2026 injections, immunisations, chronic disease care plans,” she said.<\/p>\n While any serious concerns would be relayed to the doctors at the clinic, Ms O’Reilly said taking on more routine duties allowed the GPs to see more patients.<\/p>\n “If they did [all those things] in one day, then they wouldn’t see a patient for anything else,” she said.<\/p>\n Dr Wickramaratne would like to see nurses’ duties to be billable on the Medicare Benefits Schedule.\u00a0 (ABC Riverina: Jess Scully)<\/p>\n Follow-ups more likely<\/p>\n Chairth Wickramaratne says the wait time to see a doctor in the practice is usually about two days.<\/p>\n He said the new system allowed him to spend more time with patients who had complex needs.<\/p>\n “Honestly, this program should have happened a long time ago,” Dr Wickramaratne said.<\/p>\n “If I have to come monitor somebody while they’re having an infusion [that takes] half an hour.”<\/p>\n Dr Wickramaratne said patients now seemed more likely to come back for follow-up appointments as Ms O’Reilly worked as a connection between the patient and their doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n “They prefer to see the nurse than the GP” he said.<\/p>\n “Continuity of care is the most important part of the whole game.”<\/p>\n But Dr Wickramaratne said under present funding models, most of what Ms O’Reilly did could not be billed under Medicare.<\/p>\n Elise Penton spearheaded the initiative.\u00a0 (ABC Riverina: Jess Scully\u00a0)<\/p>\n Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network project officer Elise Penton said the project would be expanded this year from 18 locations, including Tumut, Temora, Tumbarumba and Wagga Wagga, to 28 nurse-led clinics across the region.<\/p>\n She said the program was designed to ease the burden on GPs and the hospital system.<\/p>\n “This is just scratching the surface but \u2026 we’ll start seeing better health outcomes for patients, particularly with chronic diseases,” Ms Penton said.<\/p>\n An evaluation of last year’s trial showed 94 per cent of GPs and practice managers agreed the model was sustainable, with 87 per cent reporting they were likely to continue using it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurses working at a medical centre in southern NSW are stepping onto the frontline of patient care to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,39079,2683,137,500,130970,28211,2969],"class_list":["post-213590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-clinic","tag-gp","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-murrumbidgee-primary-health-network","tag-nurses","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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