Nurses are highly skilled healthcare professionals who provide quality patient care within a practice.
They can ease pressure on other healthcare practitioners and increase overall patient satisfaction and experience.
The role of a Nurse is highly versatile in nature and can vary between practices depending on a multitude of factors, including experience level, education, training and patient needs.
With a multitude of pressure points on patient care, it’s important to question whether your nurses are being fully utilised and if more could be done to maximise their skillset to improve patient care, compliment Doctor services and improve financial outcomes.
Utilisation of skills
Areas to consider when assessing whether you’re taking full advantage of Nurses:
- Data investigation and recall – Identify patients through practice data to not only improve access and screening for patients, but to contribute to quality care and assist in meeting targets.
- Health education – Providing education around key areas of concern within your patients, including cardiovascular disease education, asthma education, diabetes education, sexual health education etc. could remove the word education after each point as it is mentioned at the beginning?
- Health coaching and telephone counselling – Helping patients identify ways of dealing with a chronic or complex disease, including management plans and support etc.
- Care co-ordination – Coordinating care for high-dependency patients to save time connecting the dots. This can increase GP productivity with the Nurse managing clients with complex chronic diseases rather than GP’s – the focus is about the efficient use of GP time.
- Support your nurse or nursing team to establish a nurse clinic – Can you establish a team-based approach to co-ordinate care for the patient?
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is crucial in order to have a productive and efficient workplace. Relationships and mutual respect are important to keep front of mind. Taking that extra time to build relationships could boost morale and efficiencies for nursing staff, increasing overall satisfaction in their role.
Professional development & support
Continuing professional development is important for all healthcare professionals. Supporting nurses and allowing time to continue their professional development is critical for their ongoing education and development.
Pathways for Growth
Understanding career progression and growth is important for many employees. It is important that nurses understand their current role and responsibility within the practice as well as understanding how they can progress in their career within the practice. Having a strong performing nursing team can create a point of difference, setting your practice apart from others in the area.
Recognition and Reward
A solid reward and recognition program can have a significant impact on not only how your nurses perform, but how engaged they are within the practice. It may be beneficial to engage nurses in this process to determine what is important to them and their ongoing job fulfilment. In this current demanding healthcare landscape, it’s important for practices to stop and consider ways to maintain and grow their service offering to the public. Nurses are a core member of a medical practice team and are now more than ever playing a key role in overall patient care.
For more information on how Cutcher & Neale can assist you and your practice, get in touch below or call 1800 988 522.
