Examining the roles of rural nurses in resuscitation care: An ethnographic study

Rural nurses play a vital role in the provision of resuscitation care, as first responders and often the sole healthcare professionals delivering timely interventions with greater role autonomy and extended scope of practice. Whilst there is a developing body of literature describing the 'generalist' roles of rural nurses when providing care in acute care settings, little is known about the roles rural nurses assume during a resuscitation.

The aim of this study was to explore the role/s that rural nurses enact when delivering resuscitative care to their rural community.

An ethnographic methodology was used across two rural hospital sites in Australia, involving non-participant observation and interviews.

Reflexive thematic analysis led to three themes that described the resuscitative roles of rural nurses: Senior and junior nurse, formal and informal leadership roles, multiple roles.

This study has placed a spotlight on rural nurse's capacity to be adaptive in a dynamic and highly variable resuscitative environment. Building leadership capacity should be a rural nursing workforce strategy, aimed at supporting the unique roles that rural nurses undertake when working with various external teams during resuscitations.