What the community needs and deserves
Published: 7 December 2009
We are nurses and midwives who work across the spectrum of health care in Australia.
Our vision is to ensure the communities in which we work receive the full complement of services we can provide.
We welcome changes to the way health care is delivered which expand our roles and improve Australian’s access to quality and affordable health care.
In June we marked an historic day for health care, nurses and midwives in this county, with new legislation giving ‘eligible midwives’ and nurse practitioners prescribing rights on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS).
The introduction of the Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill and the Midwives Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Bill indicates a government keen to recognise the benefits that highly skilled and educated nurse practitioners and midwives bring to the health of all Australians.
However, more recently we were disappointed at the government’s amendment to the Health Legislation Amendment Bill which places a requirement on eligible midwives and nurse practitioners to have a collaborative arrangement in place with one or more medical practitioners.
While it’s common practice for us to work in collaboration with a variety of health professionals including doctors, it certainly cannot be an absolute requirement.
Our issue with this amendment extends far beyond how each of us sees our relationship with doctors to what the community needs and deserves.
While doctors groups have clearly got the ear of the Health Minister, we know that there are individual doctors who support the expanded roles of nurses. Similarly we know many individual doctors support midwives. We know these doctors are very willing to work with nurses and midwives in a collaborative way.
From the very beginning, the government has had an agenda to include a requirement for a collaborative arrangement in their legislation.
However, to impose an absolute legal requirement on nurse practitioners and eligible midwives to make these arrangements in order to practise is not a practical solution.
Together with the ANF, we’re seeking to ensure the definitions contained in the regulations (which, when developed, will ultimately support the Bill) will make certain that nurse practitioners and eligible midwives can continue to see clients who do not have constant access to GPs or other medical practitioners.
We’re currently working through the difficult task of attempting to define collaboration in a way that neither confines our practice nor stymies access to our services.
Rest assured that we will not sway in our resolve to ensure the public can easily and efficiently access the services of midwives and nurse practitioners.
We are committed to seeing our communities being fully able to realise the benefits of our expert nurses and midwives.
After all, this is what our community expects and deserves.
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