Abstract
Objective: To investigate whether the location and the number of nurse consultations have changed in response to the continuously decreasing number of GP consultations in the fourth-largest city in Finland. It has been suggested that nurse consultations are replacing GP consultations. Design: A retrospective register-based follow-up cohort study. Setting: Public primary health care in the City of Vantaa, Finland. Subjects: All documented face-to-face office-hour consultations with practical and registered nurses, and consultations with practical and registered nurse in the emergency department of Vantaa primary health care between 1 January 2009 and 31 December, 2014. Main outcome measures: Change in the number of consultations with practical and registered nurses between 2009 and 2014 in primary health care both during office-hours and in the emergency department. Results: Over the follow-up period, the monthly median number of practical nurse consultations in the emergency department per 1000 inhabitants increased from 1.6 (interquartile range [IQR] 1.3–1.7) to 10.5 (10.3–12.2) (p < 0.001) and registered nurse consultations from a median of 3.6 (3.0–4.0) to 14.5 (13.0–16.6) (p < 0.001). However, there was no significant change in the median monthly number of office-hour consultations with practical or registered nurses. Conclusions: It appears that in primary health care, medical consultations have shifted from GPs to nurses with lower education levels, and from care during office-hours to emergency care.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | 643-649 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISSN | 0281-3432 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Fields of Science
- emergency department
- follow-up
- general practitioner
- office-hour care
- practical nurse
- primary health care
- registered nurse
- 3121 General medicine, internal medicine and other clinical medicine