REGULATORY NEWS; Nurse Practitioners to the Rescue

The options keep widening for consumers who are not satisfied with conventional medicine. From midwives to homeopaths, naturopaths to nurse practitioners. This is the government's way of doing an end run around the high cost monopoly of drug and surgery physicians.

London Free Press

Nurse practitioners offer communities options for health care

By MARILYN LINTON, QMI Agency

Last Updated: June 21, 2010 9:25am

My cousin never goes to a doctor, yet she’s receiving excellent care. She sees Barbara, a nurse practitioner, who attends to most of her medical needs from ordering X-rays to diagnosing and managing her diabetes, from prescribing an antibiotic cream to referring her on to an ophthalmologist or other medical specialists.

Here I am in a big city, just minutes away from world-class hospitals, yet I regard my cousin and Barbara, both of whom live in a small Ontario town, as working on the cutting edge of medicine. In fact, some Canadians regard nurse practitioners or NPs as the solution to our crowded and underserved health system. But many others don’t even know what these front-line professionals do - or don’t do.

View the Original Article Here