S05 E07 Nurse Practitioners - Primary Care Providers
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In this episode Morgan and Sarah learn more about the different kinds of roles that Family Nurse Practitioners (NPs) can take on in primary care teams in BC. NPs are uniquely positioned in BC and can act as Primary Care Providers and/or work with focused populations. In conversations with NPs who work in a range of models of care including NP clinics, Urgent and Primary Care Centres and Community Health centres Morgan and Sarah learn about NP scope of practice, and hear stories of how NPs work as part of these different kinds of teams.

Our calls to action this week are generalizable across all roles in primary care teams!

• First, create time to connect
• Second, build shared understanding of roles and standardize roles wherever possible - particularly when there is very real role overlap - like you would see with an NP and a Family Doctor (and include patients in building this shared understanding)
• Lastly Figure out communication pathways and build good communication cadence, to support coordination, and also relationships across the team.

Thanks to our guests this week!

• Eliza Henshaw: Eliza has practiced for 14 years as a primary care Nurse Practitioner across a populations ranging from refugees to complex populations in urban environments in Vancouver. She has been part of a number of interdisciplinary teams, and is currently joining a new clinic within the North Shore Primary Care Network, which is a partnership between Midwives and Nurse Practitioners.
• Sydney Richardson-Carrr: Sydney is a Family Nurse Practitioner who works at the Kelowna and Vernon Urgent and Primary Care Centres. She is also a council member with NNPBC.
• Erin Berukoff: Erin is an NP who has been providing primary health care services to her patients at Family Tree Health Clinic in Powell River for almost 5 years
• Kelvin Bai: Kelvin is an NP who works as part of the team at RISE Community Health Centre in Vancouver, which serves a diverse inner city patient population with a large number of immigrants and refugees, as well as folks with lower socio-economic status, and precarious status where the need for cultural safety and humanitarian concerns motivate the care that is provided.
• Spence Newell (RN): Spence Newell is a registered nurse who works at both the Kelowna and West Kelowna UPCCs. . He completed his BScN at McMaster University in 2017, and since that time he has worked as a nurse in primary care, public health and community health care settings

Resources:

If you would like to learn more about the scope of practice for nurse practitioners in BC check out :BC College of Nurses & Midwives: Scope of Practice for Nurse Practitioners) (Standards, Limits, Conditions)

Take a listen to the TeamUp Webinar from Earlier this year focused on nursing scope of practice: TeamUP: Nursing Scope of Practice)