About Nurse Practitioner's
Nurse Practitioners like General Practitioners, are lead healthcare provider for individuals and or their families.
Nurse Practitioners combine their advanced nursing knowledge and skills with medical knowledge using diagnostic reasoning and therapeutic knowledge to provide expert patient-centered healthcare. Nurse Practitioners diagnose, prescribe, order and interpret diagnostic and laboratory tests, they admit and dischrge and refer to hospital and specialist care when required. Nurse Practitioners have a broad scope of practice and have the same prescribing authority as General Practitioners. They provide care for people with both common and complex conditions.
The Nursing Council of New Zealand established the Nurse Practitioner scope in 2001 to meet the changing health needs of New Zealanders. Nurse Practitioners (NP') are part of a global workforce and are Registered in Canada, United States of America, United Kingdom and Australia. As of June 2023 there were 701 registered NP's in NZ by January 2025 there will be estimated 800, or one percent of the nursing workforce. An omnibus of changes to health legislation in 2017 removed many barriers to Nurse Practitioners, and health legislation now refers to Health Practitioner to be inclusive of the Nursing and Medical Practitioners and their professional scope of practice. As clinical leaders they work across healthcare settings and influence health service delivery and the wider profession.
Many Nurse Practitioners work in medically underserved areas and therefore work in primary care as there is a significant shortage of General Practitioners (GP) and GP trainees. Health workforce shortages is a global trend impacting medicine, nursing and many allied health professions. In New Zealand in 2022 there were 5,728 GP's registered in New Zealand. Forty percent of our medical workforce is internationally trained, the highest in the OECD. Many GP's work part time and forty four percent of the workforce intend on retiring in the next ten years. In contrast the average age of NP's is younger than the GP workforce however they are also experienced as on average NP's have fifteen years of clinical experience prior to registering as a NP.
Nurse Practitioner Education and Certification
NP's have advanced clinical training and vocational experience (minimum of five years of clinical practice in a specialty area). They have advanced postgraduate university education having completed a master's degree which includes the demonstration of competencies for advanced practice and prescribing applied within their area of practice. As they are able to prescribe medicines within their scope with the same authority as medical practitioners. Nurse practitioners during their professional internship undergo a minimum of three hundred hours of clinical supervision of practice by a qualified medical and/or nurse practitioner. To become qualified they submit an extensive portfolio of evidence demonstrating competency and then sit an oral panel assessment against the nurse practitioner competencies. Similar to medicine and nursing, evidence of ongoing competency is required and submitted to Nursing Council of New Zealand every three years for ongoing certification.