A new nurse practitioner clinic is offering services out of the Sackville Memorial Hospital’s ambulatory care clinic to those without a family doctor or NP.
What started out as a series of PAP test clinics has morphed into something with a wider range of services, including drivers medicals, handicap parking forms, medication refills (other than narcotics), blood pressure checks, and routine lab testing with follow up. Nurse Practitioner Darla MacPherson says that while she was working in the hospital’s emergency department, she coulld see the need for an “orphan clinic.”
“I could see people, women in particular, coming in who had not had their physicals done for a long time,” says MacPherson, “some who had abnormal PAP smears. And I was like, oh, something has to be done about that. This can’t go on.”
So MacPherson got permission to run a temporary PAP clinic out of the hospital’s ambulatory care section. But it didn’t stop there.
“That very day of starting the PAP clinic, I said to Sarah [Brown, the Sackville Memorial Hospital business manager], in the parking lot, there are people coming to my door all the time looking for med refills, because I’m a Sackville girl, and everybody who knows me knows I’m a nurse practitioner.”
She told Brown, “the need is there. I’d love to help out in that way.”
As both Brown and MacPherson recall, “it was an immediate yes.” And then, the clinic became an immediate success.
“It has been so well received,” says MacPherson. “I am booked up until September.” That’s when the clinic will ramp up, doubling its hours to one day per week, up from twice a month.
Not permanent, but ‘as long as we can’
The ambulatory care clinic at the Sackville Memorial Hospital is normally for patients referred from the ER or their family physician for specific appointments, to do things like infusions, dressing changes, or stitch or staple removal. It’s also used by visiting specialists to see patients in Sackville. It’s not usually a place for primary care services, like what’s happening and is planned to grow across the parking lot at the new Tantramar Primary Care Clinic. That Clinic is also operated by Horizon, but through a different part of the organization, with long term plans to grow to house a number of primary care prividers and other health care professionals. Over at the hospital, MacPherson’s NP clinic is more of an add-on, being offered because those involved saw a need and a way to fill it.
“Typically, we don’t offer primary care at a hospital,” says Brown. “That’s more of a community clinic, similar to the Tantramar clinic, setting. But where we have the space, the resources, the staff, and the ability–and obviously need and interest–then we are happy to offer that as long as we can.”
MacPherson says she is loathe to commit to a timeline, but predicts she will be there at least a year, and otherwise “as long as my health holds out, and my brain keeps firing.”
MacPherson is retired, having put in her 40 years, starting out working as a nurse in the labour and delivery ward at the Sackville Memorial Hospital. She then went on to work in Nova Scotia, became a Nurse Practitioner, working as a manager and VP with the health authority. But being an NP is her calling, she says.
“I love it. It’s my heartbeat. I just love helping people and having the ability to do that,” says MacPherson. She describes the role of nurse practitioners as ‘advanced registered nurses’, with the added skills of diagnosis, prescribing, and ordering and interpreting tests.
“Nurse practitioners are much closer to the physician,” says MacPherson, “although nurse practitioners come from the nursing mindset… We listen to the whole person… It’s a very holistic, supportive approach.”
To make an appointment with the nurse practitioner clinic is at the Sackville Memorial Hospital call the hospital’s ambulatory care clinic at 506-364-4248.
Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report:
