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NZ's First Pain Nurse Practitioner

NZ's First Pain Nurse Practitioner


A Waikato Hospital nurse who says she is passionate about pain management is now New Zealand’s first pain nurse practitioner able to prescribe medication herself.

Sue King, 54, a nurse for 33 years, describes her journey to becoming a nurse practitioner as a natural one given the work she’s been doing at Waikato Hospital since 1995, when the acute pain service was established.

Nurse practitioners are expert nurses who work within a specific area of practice incorporating advanced knowledge and skills.
They practice both independently, in collaboration with other health care professionals to promote health, prevent disease, and to diagnose, assess and manage people’s health needs.

Not all nurse practitioners have prescribing rights – New Zealand’s only other nurse practitioner in pain management Judy Leader of Mid Central has elected not to attain prescribing rights.

Having the ability to prescribe for patients who have pain problems is central to King’s work at Waikato Hospital.

“I’m often the senior nurse on the pain round and we do clinical rounds every day. The doctors look to me for advice, I’m always suggesting or recommending and now I can prescribe things myself. I don’t have to rely on junior doctors,” she said.

There are some limitations though. King can only prescribe anti-emetics, laxatives and analgesics - drugs used to relieve pain - and even within that, there are other limitations.

“There are some important projects I want to work on now. One is screening for risk.”

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King hopes that all patients coming into Waikato Hospital for elective surgical procedures and possibly those admitted with trauma, will eventually be screened. Specific factors are known to place individuals at higher risk of severe postoperative pain with the potential if it isn’t managed well to go onto developing chronic post surgical pain. A pilot tool developed by King is about to be trialled at Waikato Hospital.

“What I hope this tool will do is flag people at risk which will alert the anaesthetists so we can then think about their pain management in a more timely and comprehensive way in order to minimise the impact of post surgical pain.”

Discharge communication from the hospital to the patient and GPs also needs to improve.

That’s another project King wants to nail. “We need to have better communication with the primary healthcare sector, especially regarding the patient’s pain management plan.”

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