Thursday, June 11, 2015

Expanding Opportunities for Rural Communities to Get Quality Care

by Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, Senior Adviser for Nursing, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 

The full version of this post is on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health blog.

I read recently in The New York Times about Murlene Osburn, a cattle rancher and psychiatric nurse, who will finally be able to start seeing patients now that Nebraska has passed legislation enabling advanced practice nurses to practice without a doctor’s oversight.

Osburn earned her graduate degree to become a psychiatric nurse after becoming convinced of the need in her rural community, but she found it impossible to practice. That’s because a state law requiring advanced practice nurses to have a doctor’s approval before they performed tasks—tasks they were certified to do. The closest psychiatrist was seven hours away by car (thus the need for a psychiatric nurse), and he wanted to charge her $500 a month. She got discouraged and set aside her dream of helping her community.

I lived in Nebraska for seven years, and I know firsthand that many rural communities lack adequate health services. As a public health nurse supervisor responsible for the entire state, I regularly traveled to small, isolated communities. Some of these communities did not have a physician or dentist, let alone a psychiatric nurse. People are forced to drive long distances to attain care, and they often delay necessary medical treatment as a result—putting them at risk of becoming even sicker, with more complex medical conditions.

Read the rest of Hassmiller's post on the Culture of Health blog.




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