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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2121 ..


MRS CROSS (continuing):

be provided at the highest standard by the university, so that qualified nurse practitioners will base their practice on evidence.

Mr Speaker, the single most important issue about this legislation is that it has the potential to improve health outcomes for our community. That is why it ought to be supported by all members and why I am happy to lend my support to it.

MS DUNDAS

(12.04): The ACT Democrats will be supporting this bill and we welcome the initiative from the government. Members will hopefully recall a motion I successfully moved last year, calling on the ACT government to accelerate the accreditation of nurse practitioners, to help address Canberra's growing GP shortage and to tackle the problem of nurses leaving the profession, due to limited career paths and lack of recognition of their skills. This bill does exactly that.

I have received many letters from Canberrans highlighting the general practitioner shortage in Canberra, especially in Belconnen and Tuggeranong-and this problem is increased outside of normal business hours.

With health concerns, there is often a level of buck-passing between the state and territory governments and the federal government. However, we owe it to our community to move from the buck-passing and do all we can to address the real needs for accessible health care.

Members of the health profession often bemoan the fact that doctors' time is consumed by tasks that university-trained nurses are well skilled to perform. Nurses are insulted that they are not being recognised as able to perform these roles. In our hospitals, nurses already make recommendations about changes to drug dosages, but a doctor's sign-off is required before changes can be made.

Nurses often take pathology samples, but a fiction is maintained that these samples are taken under the supervision of a doctor, even when the doctor may be less knowledgeable about best practice sampling procedures. To remove unnecessary supervision from highly qualified nurses would free-up doctors' time in all parts of our health system.

We also have the problem of a shortage of trained nurses, because they are leaving the health system to work in other areas. The National Review of Nursing Education, released in September of last year, found that nurses are leaving the profession in droves because they feel that their knowledge and skills are not respected, their career paths are limited and they are not paid a wage in line with their skills.

Increasing the numbers of nurses being trained is not going to fix the nurse shortage, unless retention is also improved dramatically. Nurse practitioner programs have the potential to provide a more rewarding career path for nurses, and to provide the recognition nurses are looking for. The New South Wales government has gone ahead with a system to accredit highly qualified and experienced nurses as nurse practitioners, who have referral and prescribing rights in their areas of speciality, and to do away with some of the fictions that exist in our medical system.


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