Frailty Focus: Empowering Rural Health With Advanced Nurse Practitioners: A Discussion Paper

Frailty is a multidimensional condition with symptoms relating to falls, immobility, incontinence, impaired memory and medication side-effects. With increasing numbers of frailty, particularly in rural areas, healthcare systems are being challenged globally. Moreover, frailty may be more common in rural communities as a consequence of transportation issues, limited access to healthcare services and health promotion activities. Advanced Nurse Practitioners are ideally placed to undertake comprehensive geriatric assessments and identify frailly syndromes.

Explore the function of the Advanced Nurse Practitioner in managing people living with frailty in rural areas, drawing on a review of current guidelines, literature, and practice, considering public health agendas and evidence-based practice.

Discussion paper.

Frailty is linked to poorer health outcomes, an excessive use of health resources and decreased quality of life. Incorporating Advanced Nurse Practitioners into integrated models of care and health improvement strategies, can improve patient outcomes.

Using advanced clinical and decision-making skills, Advanced Nurse practitioners deliver evidence-based care to improve patient safety and health outcomes. Creating partnerships to enhance the provision of healthcare, they are focused on frailty prevention, detection and providing support to develop co-produced management plans to address individual needs. The Advanced Nurse Practitioner has the ability to practice autonomously within an expanded scope of clinical practice, making them the ideal professional to support people living with frailty in rural areas.

When thinking about future strategies for advanced practice, it is important to acknowledge the lack of regulation, roles in nursing, inadequate title protection, role variability, and different educational requirements. Organisations need to consider the enablers and barriers of Advanced Nurse Practitioners fulfilling their duties. Advanced Nurse practitioners are guided by public health agendas to improve the population health of those in rural areas.

This is a discussion paper.