Nurses across a wide range of service sectors contribute a major component of the spectrum of primary care – supporting patients, families and communities in a wide range of health promotion, disease prevention, and chronic illness management activities to name a few. However, wherever they work, nurses also witness the individual impacts of a troubled primary care system -- a system that does not yet guarantee access for all British Columbians, that remains strongly physician-centric at a time when physicians themselves are concerned about the serious scarcity of primary care providers within their own ranks, and whose funding and management systems operate in isolation from the rest of the publicly funded health care system. British Columbia lags behind most other provinces and many other nations in enacting a truly comprehensive and coordinated interprofessional system of care. And nurses see first hand how the gaps in primary care lead to unacceptable acute and chronic illness rates as well as preventable human suffering.

Read More »Adding the RN Voice to Primary Care Reform , by Sally Thorne RN