Working together: the advanced rural nurse practitioner and the rural doctor

This paper discusses the complex and interrelated roles of the rural nurse and doctor. These roles are viewed as being complementary to each other in any healthcare setting, but more so within the context of rural Australia. The current move towards the development of advanced nurse practitioner roles is often clouded by unnecessary medical fears that nurses are attempting to displace doctors. In contrast, this paper argues that the development of new rural nursing roles identifies rural nursing as a major specialist area within the wider profession of nursing and, at the same time, recognises the reality of practice for many rural nurses. Individual public figures may perceive the solution to the shortage of rural doctors to lie in their replacement with nurses. The nursing profession, however, will resist this approach. Nursing is not the first rung on the ladder to a career in medicine. Nurses are educated and acknowledged to focus their practice on the clients' responses to healthcare problems and not the practice of medicine. The primary role of the nurse is to provide care. The primacy of care should not be set aside by those nurses seeking to develop their practice, not should advanced practice be defined in terms of taking on tasks previously carried out by other healthcare professionals.