extended nurse roles

As promised, today we have a new caption competition. This image comes from the University of Missouri’s online masters degree programme.

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Wow, E’s post on the NurseQuack debate seems to have stirred up a hornet’s nest. One response from NHS Blog Doctor and two from Dr Rant. Personally, I never even thought it was a particularly pro-NurseQuack post.

I do wonder though, if there’s a middle ground to the NurseQuack debate that’s being left unexplored by two utterly polarised camps. In the comments thread, Beakie made an interesting response about making a distinction between extending the nursing role and expanding it.

Extending your role is different to expanding your role, in my view. Extending your role is taking a key element of nursing and enhancing your ability to do that…Expanding your role, on the other hand, suggests taking on things that are extra to your key nursing skills - prescribing, diagnosing, minor surgery and so on. I’m not in favour of that at all. I agree that this leads to a dumbing down of the service, not because nurses are dumb but because by the very nature of the education they receive for these expanded roles, they are at risk of focussing on their discrete area of practice and are not in a position to take the ‘helicopter view’ that five years basic medical training plus a number of years further education in your specialisation would offer you.

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