Digby hospital losing full-time nurse practitioner

Southwest District Health Authority spokesperson Fraser Mooney confirms that nurse practitioner Dara Lee MacDonald has accepted a position elsewhere and Friday June 26 was to be her last day at the Digby General nurse practitioner's clinic.

With this departure, Digby General’s full-time nurse practitioner position is now vacant.

Mooney is quick to stress that efforts are underway to find a replacement. “We are busy recruiting for a new full-time nurse practitioner for that position. In fact a few prospects are in the interview process now.” “In the meantime, we are trying to move some resources around to maintain as much coverage as possible,” says Mooney. He adds that the nurse practitioner who comes in from the Islands to work Fridays in Digby will continue to do so. The nurse practitioner from the Clare-Weymouth area who had been working one day a week in Digby will now cover both Mondays and Wednesdays.

So, the clinic will now operate just three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “The community reaction has been very positive since the nurse practitioner clinic opened, and we certainly want to see that continue,” says Mooney. “We want to make sure there’s as little disruption of service as possible. Until (a replacement is found) we will continue trying to fill as many gaps as we can.”

Nurse practitioners are registered nurses with additional training.

Working in collaboration with a physician, nurse practitioners can make a diagnosis identifying a disease, disorder or condition, order and interpret screening and diagnostic tests, and can prescribe drugs.

The first nurse practitioner in the district was hired in 2002 as a pilot project on Long and Brier Islands. MLA Junior Theriault says hiring those nurse practitioners helped reduce by 50% the number of visits by Islands residents to the Digby ER.

The Digby General nurse practitioner clinic opened in 2008.