Nurses could manage chronic care on doctors’ orders

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Nurses could manage chronic care on doctors’ orders

By Shereen Lehman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Expanding the role of nurses in managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol could be an effective way to handle the shortage of primary care physicians, according to a new study. “The idea was to see if we could have nurses, who are the nation’s largest healthcare workforce, assume additional roles which they already do in hospitals, but they don't necessarily do that much in outpatient settings,” said lead author Ryan Shaw. A registered nurse and health services researcher at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, Shaw told Reuters Health the Affordable Care Act is only worsening the shortage of primary care doctors by increasing demand for health care. He and his colleagues reviewed past research evaluating the effectiveness of registered nurses in leading the management of outpatients with any of several chronic diseases by following protocols set by physicians.

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