The announcement by the provincial government last week that it would allow nurse practitioners to set up their own clinics by early next year seems, at first blush, to be a boon to Alberta’s primary care network.
The thought of bolstering the front line of our medical system likely came as welcome news to many among the hundreds of thousands of Albertans who are without a family doctor. Nurse practitioners are a key component of the health system, so even though they’re not equivalent to a GP, they could be seen as a lifeline to many people currently in health care limbo.
Like so many government announcements, however, the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to this undertaking.
First off, how many NPs are going to hang their own shingle and where are they coming from? If they’re already working in primary care clinics and hospitals, then we’ll just be trading one problem for another.
Perhaps even more problematic is that family physicians in this province, those who are already in short supply, came away from the announcement feeling devalued and disrespected, further straining an already adversarial relationship. It didn’t help that the premier essentially lumped GPs and NPs together as family care practitioners, conveniently ignoring the chasm that exists between the two professions based on skillset and education.
Part of the reason we’re in this primary care mess is because of the way this government has treated GPs, and this most recent development has only exacerbated the situation, potentially driving more of them away.
Nurse practitioners could well play a crucial role in addressing our primary care shortcomings, but rather than put them on an island as an option to GPs, it would seem better to integrate them into a more layered system that ensures family doctors are the backbone of family medicine.
