Nurse Practitioner Approved for Long and Brier Islands

Residents of Long and Brier Islands will see their access to health care improve with the announcement today, July 24, of a nurse practitioner for the area.

Health Minister Jamie Muir announced the plan at a meeting in Freeport on Long Island, telling residents that a nurse practitioner will be hired as part of a three-year pilot project to help expand primary-care services for the 1,200 people living on the islands off Digby neck.

A new nurse practitioner will work closely with the islands' paramedics, who have been part of a unique primary-care pilot project for almost two years.

The paramedics, in addition to their emergency calls, have also been providing some primary-care services to residents.

"Having a nurse practitioner on Long and Brier working in collaboration with a physician and paramedics will simply mean better health care for residents of the area," said Mr. Muir. "More than half the residents of Long and Brier are seniors, and having better primary-care services on the islands will save patients many trips to Digby."

"I'm especially pleased that Digby physician Dr. Roy Harding has agreed to work with a new nurse practitioner. The pilot project would not be possible without his support at the very beginning," said Mr. Muir. "This is a significant step for residents of Long and Brier, but it's also significant in the larger context of how we deliver primary health care in Nova Scotia at a time when resources and health professionals are increasingly scarce."

The scope of practice for a nurse practitioner is defined by the agreement between the nurse practitioner and the physician or physicians in the area, with final approval from the College of Registered Nurses. In most cases, the nurse practitioner is able to diagnose and treat the kinds of general illnesses that routinely send people to a family doctor, like an earache; but the role also includes leadership in many health-promotion and illness-prevention programs to suit a particular community.

"We're extremely pleased to see this pilot project move forward," said Blaise MacNeil, CEO of the Southwest Nova District Health Authority. "The unique mix of nurse practitioner working collaboratively with paramedics and the medical profession is a model we're interested in piloting and evaluating."

A job posting for the new nurse practitioner will be advertised before the end of the summer.