Nearly one in three Saskatchewan residents live in rural and remote areas and face certain barriers to receiving quality health care. Some communities have access to a physician only a few days a month, experience difficulties in obtaining key health care services such as diagnostic testing or access to specialists, and even face issues around transportation to urban centres to receive medical care.

Registered nurses are a critical part of a skilled team of frontline professionals on the ground that is working hard to combat this problem.

“Registered nurses work together with physicians and the rest of health care professionals to make sure that people in rural and remote areas don’t get lost,” said Tracy Zambory, RN, president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN). “They understand the population they serve by developing great relationships with them. When they sit down with their patient, they view them holistically. They often have a deeper understanding about their patient’s social determinants of health: history of mental health or addiction, home situation, food security, and access to health care outside of appointments. This is because registered nurses have become a part of these small rural communities in which they live and work.”

She added that RNs have identified that this is the best way to tackle health care in rural and remote areas in Saskatchewan. “If we can keep people in their home communities to get the health care treatments that they need, it alleviates the pressure that major health care centres are under and creates immense cost savings that can be reinvested back into the health care system.”

There are two designations of RNs making a particularly strong impact on the health care system in rural and remote Saskatchewan: RN Nurse Practitioners (RN[NP]s) and RNs with Additional Authorized Practice (RN[AAP]s). RN(NP)s, who have achieved the most advanced level of education among RNs, can independently assess, diagnose and manage common medical conditions. RN(AAPs) can independently assess, diagnose and treat a more limited set of common medical conditions.

Zambory calls these groups the “eyes and the ears for the physicians when the physicians can’t be there.”

One of these sets of eyes and ears is Dre Erwin, an RN(AAP) stationed in the remote community of Pinehouse, 800 kilometres north of Regina. As a RN(AAP), he follows a strict set of standardized guidelines called Clinical Decision Tools.