John Thompson presents Scoping Review on Advanced Nursing Practice at St Vincent’s Symposium

John Thompson, Lecturer/Nurse Practitioner and PhD candidate in the Department of Nursing at The University of Melbourne, presented findings from a recent scoping review as a keynote speaker at St Vincent’s Allied Health & Nursing Research Symposium 2024. The symposium celebrated outstanding Allied Health and Nursing clinician research from across St. Vincent’s Melbourne campus.

John’s presentation highlighted current methods Nurse Practitioners (NPs) use to evaluate their practice and identified areas needing further development in demonstrating impact and refining evaluation approaches.

The NP role was first established to support patients and consumers who had difficulty accessing healthcare, including marginalised and regional/remote communities with a shortage of medical professionals. However, the profession has encountered significant barriers to the role functioning to its full scope. Such restrictions include accessing national primary care funding schemes, such as Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

A scoping review conducted by John and his team found a lack of consistency in how NPs measure their impact, with varying metrics and indicators used across specialty areas. This lack of standardisation complicates the data collection process and hinders the ability to accurately demonstrate the overall value of the NP profession.

“If NPs had a common set of quality and safety metrics they could use, that show the benefits that we bring as a profession, rather than by specialty, we might have more sway with getting the outcomes NPs are looking for,” John said.

Furthermore, John noted that there was no evidence of consumer input into past research and evaluation design, or the metrics that should be captured. “Given that we’re in the business of improving patient outcomes, it would be ideal to at least have the consumer’s or patient’s voice.” John hopes his PhD will address and reinvent these processes.

John’s next step is to submit his research plan for ethics approval and advocate for legislative changes that allow NPs to work to their full scope, be reimbursed accordingly, and meet the initial purpose of the NP role.

“We really need to invest in the NP role so that we can create more jobs to improve people’s access to care. Currently, the biggest issue is funding. We have a lot of nurses who want to advance their career and want to remain clinical, but they just can’t. There’s a limited number of NP roles available. Hopefully these [research] results will show the benefits of that and help to create more NP roles,” John expressed.

You can learn more about John’s work by watching his presentation at a VCCC Alliance webinar, sending him an email or following him on LinkedIn.