Member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall, centre, personally welcomed new Nurse Practitioners bound for two local hospitals in the region yesterday – Adele Goody (Glen Innes), left, and Sue Mack (Bingara).
Thursday, 15 September 2022
NORTHERN Tablelands MP Adam Marshall was on hand in Tamworth yesterday to personally congratulate and welcome two newly-graduated and freshly-minted Nurse Practitioners as they prepared to start work in the Bingara and Glen Innes communities next week.
Mr Marshall commended long-term Bingara nurse Sue Mack and current Northern Territory-based clinician Adele Goody on taking the next step in their nursing careers.
“This is a big step up for Sue and Adele and they will both be welcomed with open arms by their nursing colleagues in Bingara and Glen Innes and both communities more broadly,” Mr Marshall said.
“They will be a huge shot-in-the-arm for the morale and service capability of our region’s already stretched nursing workforce.
“A Nurse Practitioner is a registered nurse who has been trained and educated to perform at an advanced level and can assess and diagnose patients, request and interpret tests, prescribe therapies and medications, and receive and make referrals to other health practitioners and specialists.
“This will be an absolute godsend for patients at both locations, where often there is no doctor at the hospital, as they can perform many patient-related functions previously only reserved for a qualified doctor.
“As we all know, the current health service model struggles with staffing and a general shortage of GPs also impacts the availability of that level of medical expertise in many of our rural centres.
“That being said, Nurse Practitioners are not a substitute for qualified doctors in our hospital system and I’ll continue to keep the pressure on Hunter New England health and the government to directly employ doctors in our local hospitals, rather than continue with the redundant VMO and locum doctor model.”
Mr Marshall said he was particularly pleased to welcome Adele Goody to Glen Innes, all the way from the Northern Territory, where she has been nursing, while former Bingara Health Services Manager Sue Mack would stay at the hospital and take up her new duties.
“Adele will be an outstanding new staff member for Glen Innes and cannot wait to start work in December, while Sue will be back on deck at Bingara in her new role from next week,” he said.
“This is an exciting time for both women and their colleagues.”
Nurse Practitioners were introduced in NSW 20 years ago and one of the original areas of focus for the position was to support access to health care in rural and regional parts of NSW, in recent times this has become even more so.
The employment of nurse practitioners across local health districts in rural facilities is an emerging model in NSW, to improve access to health services. NSW Health employs more than 280 nurse practitioners across the state.