An evaluation of the nurse practitioner role in a major rural emergency department

The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate whether nurse practition ers are able to provide a level of primary health service applicable to rem ote/isolated settings in wound management and treatment of blunt limb traum a. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant difference in the quality of care, or the level of client satisfaction, provided by the medi cal officers and the nurse practitioners in the study. Two groups participa ted in the study, nurse practitioners and medical officers. The study used a randomized trial design. Data were collected using quantitative and quali tative methods. Two hundred and thirty-two clients participated in the stud y. Of this number 63 were supervised cases in the pilot trial. In the rando mized trial participants were distributed between nurse practitioners and m edical officers (n = 169), of which 91 were randomized to medical officers and 78 to nurse practitioners. Telephone interviews were conducted to evalu ate client satisfaction. The majority of study participants were surveyed f or client satisfaction (n = 132). This represents approximately 78% of the randomized sample and multivariate analysis was carried out on the data. St udy results indicate that there were no significant differences between the two groups in relation to client satisfaction. Very positive outcomes of t reatment were consistent across groups in the study. The study also found t hat there was strong support for the role of the nurse practitioner in the rural emergency setting. Recommendations include further research to measur e the efficacy of nurse practitioners utilizing the selected competencies i n remote/isolated settings.