By Sarah Mills

Saskatchewan’s nurse practitioners can now prescribe medications

Jan 13, 2015 | 2:54 PM

Nurse practitioners in Saskatchewan are getting more responsibility and that could have a big impact on relieving an overstretched health care system.
 
The Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association (SRNA) and the government has announced new regulation changes that will allow nurse practitioners to prescribe certain drugs and medication.
 
It will make a big difference to rural communities that aren’t currently served by a full-time doctor.
 
That is the case in Raymore, about 100 km north of Regina, where they only have a visiting physician. The front-line worker most patients see is six-year nurse practitioner Lynn Digney-Davis.
 
She tells News Talk Radio of a situation faced this past Christmas. A cancer patient needed more pain medication which Digney-Davis could not provide. Luckily — but with some effort — she got a hold of the physician who was able to write the prescription.
 
But it would been a very different circumstance if the doctor was unavailable.
 
“My patient would have had to travel probably back in to Regina to go to a mediclinic to another physician who may or may not have been comfortable prescribing that medication for her because she wasn’t a regular patient of the patient,”Digney-Davis said.
 
And for someone in pain, traveling that far is not an ideal situation.
 
“It taxes the system in ways that doesn’t need to happen now,” she says.
 
Under the new change, that patient doesn’t have to clog up an ER or mediclinic but can get help right at home from a medical professional they know and have a relationship with, regardless of whether the doctor is available or not.

news@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow