Advanced practice nursing in Australia, before and during the Covid-19 era

The role of the Australian advanced practice nurse has only been in development since the 1990s, despite the introduction of such roles in the USA in 1965. The culmination of the development work was the implementation of the nurse practitioner (NP) role in 2000 after a pilot project took place in 1994 and was evaluated favourably as showing that safe and quality health services could be provided by NPs. Although the role has now been in existence in Australia for more than 20 years, the impact on the delivery of care has been limited due to a number of reasons. The following paper will discuss…