The nurse practitioner in the treatment of cardiac patients: Successful job reallocation within health care

There is an ever-growing need for medical staff to provide health care, and several tasks that have traditionally been carried out by physicians are increasingly being undertaken by specialized nurses. Both nurse practitioners and physician's assistants now commonly work in-hospital. In the Netherlands, there have been relatively few studies which have examined the potential role of specialized nurses. A study from Alkmaar shows that the care of patients who have recently had a myocardial infarction, which is normally done by a resident/physician-in-training, can also be carried out by a nurse practitioner, when working within the limits of well-defined protocol, and under the supervision of a staff cardiologist. Although no difference in clinical endpoints was found during the follow-up period, the study shows that patients who were under the care of the nurse practitioner were overall more satisfied with the information that was provided to them, than those under the care of the resident. These findings are important and need confirmation in larger studies and in other patient populations