Nurses ‘can safely do many doctor jobs in hospitals’ – study

Nurses can safely deliver many of the jobs traditionally performed by doctors in hospitals, a new study suggests.

Academics performed a comprehensive review examining a number of aspects of patient care when delivered by nurses instead of doctors.

This included examining information on patient death rates, patient safety events and health outcomes across a number of services.

They found that in many aspects of care there was “little to no difference” whether a patient was looked after by a nurse or a doctor.

The new Cochrane review found that in some cases nurse-led care out-performed care by doctors.

Experts said the finding was significant as it could help reduce wait times for patients, increase access to care and address healthcare worker shortages.

A group of researchers from Ireland, the UK and Australia examined data from 82 studies involving more than 28,000 patients across 20 countries.

More than a third of the studies were conducted in the UK.

The four services examined in the study were: inpatient care, mostly nurses looking after “post-acute” patients or those in recovery; nurse-led clinics where nurses took over clinics usually provided by a doctor; so-called “role substitution”, including nurses in emergency departments where they provided care for patients with minor injuries; and so-called “task substitution”, a number of different tasks that would have usually been undertaken by a doctor, including endoscopy, medical abortion or pre-operative assessment.

The researchers found that substituting nurses for doctors results in little to no difference in deaths or patient safety events.

They reported that in some cases, including diabetes and eczema management, nurse-led care may result in a slight improvement in some clinical outcomes.

Professor Michelle Butler, from Dublin City University, told the Press Association: “We are very much aware of the challenges that hospitals face with increasing demand and a shortage of all types of staff, including doctors.

“And so this often results in long wait times or patients may not get the care that they need.

“We knew that there were some initiatives where nurses took on some of the care that doctors took on, and we wanted to see what the impact might be on patient outcomes and and care outcomes.

“What we found was that for death rates and safety events, there was little to no difference.

“And we found that for a small number of clinical outcomes, there were some improvements.

“All in all, these interventions are as safe and effective as the traditional form of care which is doctor-led.”

But she said that they were “not talking about nurses replacing doctors”, adding: “What we’re talking about is nurses taking on some of the care that doctors would have provided in the past, with a view to increasing access and maybe patients having to wait less for their care.”

Researchers said that they did not examine patient satisfaction and would like to look at this in the future.

They said they would also conduct a cost analysis to see whether or not increasing nurse-led care in these services could be beneficial financially.