Voiceover:
Welcome to The Raw Nerve, the official podcast of MS Australia, a conversation space for all things multiple sclerosis. Join us for news and views on the latest research, treatments and advocacy efforts, as well as candid and informative interviews with our community, those living with MS and their families and carers together with leading clinicians, researchers, and advocates.
Fiona McKay:
Hello and welcome to The Raw Nerve. I’m your host, Dr. Fiona McKay, Senior Research Coordinator at MS Australia. Today we mark International Nurses Day, an annual event observed on May the 12th, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, aimed at promoting awareness and education on the important role of nursing.
Now building on the success of the 2024 International Nurses Day theme, The Economic Power of Care, the 2025 theme shifts the focus to the health and wellbeing of our nurses -‘Our Nurses. Our Future.’ This theme underscores the critical role a healthy nursing workforce plays in strengthening economies, in improving health systems and ensuring better outcomes for communities worldwide. The International Council of Nurses will commemorate International Nurses Day 2025 with a release of a report which focuses on tangible, evidence-based solutions to enhance nurses’ health and wellbeing, recognising their crucial role in optimising both health systems and economies.
MS Australia is marking International Nurses Day 2025 with a focus on the important role of MS nursing. We are also releasing a report outlining what we can do to better support our MS nursing workforce now and into the future. The report is available on our website and was prepared by MS Australia’s MS Nurses Working Group, which comprises key nursing experts, representatives from MS Australia’s Research and Policy teams, our MS Member Organisations, MS Nurses Australasia, and MS researchers.
Now, today we’ll be speaking with two experts about MS Nurses and MS Nurse Practitioners. They are Belinda Bardsley and Tim O’Maley. We’re going to discuss the value of MS Nurses and MS Nurse Practitioners, improvements to prescribing for MS Nurse Practitioners and how we can better care for our nurses. Now, why are these so important?
MS Nurses are an integral part of the multidisciplinary healthcare team of specialist healthcare professionals who provide support, education, advice, and care for people with MS and their families and carers. Access to MS Nurse care brings a range of health benefits for people with MS, and it’s also a highly cost-effective model of care.
Now, despite their crucial role in MS care, there is no consistent allocation of MS Nurses across Australia, including no agreed nurse-patient ratio, challenging employment conditions, no formalised education pathway, and a declining number of MS Nurses. So, on this International Nurses Day, MS Australia wants to raise awareness of the value of our MS Nurses and MS Nurse Practitioners and discuss what we can do better to support them.
Now, it’s also an opportunity to look at some recent changes made by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, the PBAC, that will allow MS Nurse Practitioners to prescribe certain MS treatments under the PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) in consultation with a physician. And this change is set to dramatically improve access to care for people living with MS, especially in regional and remote areas.
So today on The Raw Nerve, we’re talking about the value of MS Nurses and MS Nurse Practitioners, about improvements to prescribing rights and about how we can better care for our nurses. And I’d now like to welcome two guests into the studio to speak about the value of nurses and nurse practitioners and about caring for our nurses.
Firstly, we have MS Nurse Belinda Bardsley, manager of the Neuro-Immunology Clinical Research, Education and Support Service, N-CRESS, at Austin Health in Melbourne. Belinda is also Chair of the MS Australia Nurses Working Group and co-author of the ‘MS Nurse Care in Australia’ Report. Welcome, Belinda.
Belinda Bardsley:
Thanks, Fiona. Thank you so much for placing a spotlight on this important issue.
Fiona McKay:
Thanks, Belinda. And from the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, we have MS Nurse Practitioner, Queensland Health and member of MS Australia MS Nurses Working Group, Tim O’Maley. Welcome, Tim.
Tim O’Maley:
Thank you, Fiona. And echoing Belinda’s comments, we are incredibly grateful for the ongoing support MS Australia is throwing at MS Nurses and our roles.
Fiona McKay:
Thank you, Tim. So, if we could first turn to you, Belinda, and begin our discussion on the value of MS Nurses. But first up, could I just ask you to explain to us what exactly is an MS Nurse?
Belinda Bardsley:
Predominantly, MS Nurse care is provided through public hospitals and community providers. There are far fewer MS Nurses that provide care through private neurology practices and pharmaceutically sponsored patient support programs. We can be based in city or rural and regional centers. We can provide phone-based or face-to-face support. Sometimes we’re based in clinical trial centers or infusion centers.
But the common theme is that we provide care, support, information and education for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And ideally, we would be involved from the time of diagnosis and right there from that point throughout the disease trajectory. And for me, I’ve worked in the field for 17 years, and I’ve known patients from the time of diagnosis and from that point onwards. And so that’s been an incredible privilege for me to have been involved in their care and to have gone through those milestone moments from that point of diagnosis.
We provide individualised care, we tailor our care to their very specific needs, and we can provide advice and intervention at times of urgent need and those milestone moments. So, from that point of diagnosis, we can advise about what to look out for, what’s really important in terms of keeping an eye out for potential relapses or changes in symptoms or disease escalation. Family planning decision-making, changes in employment, concerns about disease worsening, side effects, symptoms, and really importantly, we teach them about how to live well with their disease.
And I think it’s really important that it’s understood that we can help to change the trajectory of their disease. So, with that early information and support, they understand how they can manage that disease from that point of diagnosis. And so, they know how to act and what is urgent and needs to be responded to. And that can make all the difference in terms of responding appropriately when it’s important to do so.
Fiona McKay:
Absolutely. And so, Belinda, we (MS Australia) understand the importance and the difference that MS Nurses make in the lives of people with MS. And you are a co-author of the ‘MS Nurse Care in Australia’ Report, and that’s really provided the evidence, hasn’t it, of the value of MS Nurses. Could you tell us a bit more about that? How do MS Nurses improve outcomes for people living with MS?
Belinda Bardsley:
Well, yes, it was a really interesting report. So, we felt that intuitively we made a difference to the outcomes of people with MS. But the report did identify that that was certainly the case. And unfortunately, it also showed that about a third of people living with MS didn’t have access to MS Nurse care and that the people without access had consistently worse outcomes.
They had higher levels of disability, higher levels of self-reported progression of disease, poorer quality of life, higher levels of depression and anxiety and greater severity of MS symptoms. And these were really concerning obviously. But participants that did have access to MS Nurse care showed that they had higher adherence to MS medications, they had improved MS symptoms and side effects. They were able to lead healthier lifestyles, and they also found that MS Nurses were really able to respond to their specific needs. So, it really just demonstrated that overall, they had far better health outcomes.
Fiona McKay:
So that really demonstrated the personal benefits for people with MS, of MS Nurse care. But could you tell me, are there also economic benefits overall in having MS Nurses care for people with MS?
Belinda Bardsley:
Yeah. To me as a nurse, I’m more inclined to focus on those symptomatic things. So, the stuff that’s really important to patients is the fact that their quality of life is improved, that they have reduced depression and anxiety, the fact that their MS symptoms are improved when they have access to an MS Nurse. To me, that’s the meaningful stuff. I’m not so fussed about the cost savings, but you’ve got to be pragmatic, and if I were an economist, then obviously it’s important to do the sums.
And what we found in the report that was really meaningful was the stuff that I intuitively also thought would make sense. And picking up the phone every day, as we do in our service, we are able to troubleshoot side effects and symptoms and we also expedite people coming into clinic and streamline issues and manage things over the phone that otherwise would mean that they would need to come into the emergency room or they would potentially need to come into hospital or they would need to see the neurologist or they would need to go and see their GP.
So, we’re actually avoiding unnecessary hospitalisations, unnecessary emergency room presentations. We’ll often catch up with a patient in clinic and mean that the time that they spend with a neurologist is shortened because we can actually curtail a lot of the issues that would otherwise need to be discussed at length in that clinic visit. So, a lot of those issues can be managed by the nurse quite simply, quite straightforwardly. We’re keeping patients well on high-efficacy therapies and living really healthy, productive lives.
Fiona McKay:
And it’s been very important in MS Australia’s advocacy to government this argument that adding MS Nurse care to the equation really does reduce the cost of the healthcare, and that’s been another important finding from the report.
Belinda Bardsley:
We suggested a very modest investment of about $6 million in expenditure to improve the number of MS Nurses would equate to approximately a conservative saving of about $64 million per annum. And I think that is a bit of a no-brainer, really.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, it’s incredible.
Belinda Bardsley:
Very rarely, I believe, in public health can you get those sorts of cost savings.
Fiona McKay:
Yes. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Now, you mentioned earlier that the report showed that many people did not have access to an MS Nurse. And why is that?
Belinda Bardsley:
That’s actually my mission. And in chairing the MS Nurse Working Group, I would love it…that if everybody diagnosed with MS had access to an MS Nurse. I think we’ve certainly had a reduction in the number of MS Nurses across the country. That’s been due to changes in funding models and a general reduction in the number of nurses across the country. We have approximately 80 or 85 MS Nurses in the country for what we understand we have around 33,000 people diagnosed with MS in the country.
We also have a problem with an inequity of access of MS Nurses, particularly in rural and regional areas. That is a big problem. There’s also concerns about fewer MS Nurses, as I mentioned, in the private sector as compared with the public sector. And it’s a little bit of the luck of the draw. So, it depends where you’re diagnosed and who is managing your care, whether or not you may have access to an MS Nurse.
So, we really want to change that. I think the lack of awareness and understanding of our role too has led to people not necessarily engaging with an MS Nurse. So, we really want to ensure that people understand the value and importance of our role and what we do and the difference that we can make. And that would be an important contributor to engaging with MS Nurse care…but certainly having more of us on the ground would be a huge advantage to ensure that there was equity of access.
Fiona McKay:
Absolutely. So we might turn to Tim now. Tim is an MS Nurse Practitioner. And Tim, perhaps not everyone in our audience actually knows what an MS Nurse Practitioner is. So I wonder if you could explain to us what an MS Nurse Practitioner is and what training experience is required to be one, and what’s your role and how does it differ from an MS Nurse?
Tim O’Maley:
Certainly. Thank you, Fiona, and thank you, Belinda. Look, a nurse practitioner in Australia is somebody that’s done advanced education. It is a mandatory master’s degree within a very specialised nurse practitioner stream. Courses within Australia are very coordinated and similar from university to university to meet the criteria. To get into one of those nurse practitioner master’s courses, you must have worked a minimum of 5,000 hours in an advanced clinical practice. And that’s not just obviously neurology or multiple sclerosis. There are nurse practitioners in many different fields of nursing.
So, you have usually worked for many, many years at a reasonably high level in terms of that, before you actually even know if that’s what you want to do. It is hard coursework. We do advanced assessments, advanced pharmacology amongst other things, and most of the programs do give the nurse practitioner candidates the opportunity to do more specialised work in their area of interest. So, for me, that was obviously in multiple sclerosis and looking at pharmacology and investigations that are pertinent to the patients I hope to be supporting.
How we differ? I’m still an MS Nurse first and a nurse practitioner as an add-on, if you like. Our roles will always merge and blur. What the NP credentialing and employment position it does give you…is the autonomy to prescribe medications, to order pathology investigations depending on where you work, even ordering the MRI scans and things like that. And knowing that in you doing that, the patient is not going to be out of pocket any differently than they would have been if they were seeing a medical officer to do those things.
What comes back with that a little bit is obviously if you order something, you are accountable for it. You’re accountable for side effects, monitoring treatment, acknowledging pathology results and scans, and ensuring that that is all communicated not just with the patient but with the team that we do work in. Nurse first and foremost, and the nurse practitioner part of it just does add a little bit to what we can keep the continuity going within a clinical service.
Fiona McKay:
Absolutely. So, Tim, you were actually one of the first MS Specialist Nurses and the first MS Nurse to be endorsed as an MS Nurse Practitioner in Australia. Could you tell us a little bit about the type of work you do in a nurse-led clinic?
Tim O’Maley:
Certainly. So, I’m very lucky to be employed at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, which does have an MS clinic. We do have two wonderful neurologists that I’ve worked with for many years. But I also have my standalone nurse-led, nurse practitioner clinics. I share the same patients. We revolve them, we review them. Many of our people see me every six months and then the consultants every six months, so we do alternate.
But my clinic role is very much around doing all the things that a person would expect their neurologist or their registrar to do, but hopefully with more of a nursing slant on it. So, we do check scans, we do check blood tests, we do ask them about how their MS has been behaving, any new symptoms and things like that. I know from working with my consultants for as long as I have, they’re quite pleased that I will dig a little bit deeper into how people are living with the disease, the symptoms they’re experiencing. The outside of the hospital side of things I think is a really important part of what all MS Nurses do.
I will prescribe symptomatic treatments. We’ll touch on it a little bit later, but I’m also now allowed to prescribe most of the immunotherapy medications that we use for people as well. We will address symptoms that may not have been fully disclosed in the time limits that sometimes a consultant neurologist will have. And I think that also comes back a little bit to patients may actually feel a little bit more comfortable talking about some of the more hidden symptoms, the bladder and bowel changes or sexual dysfunction or cognitive changes with an MS Nurse or an MS Nurse Practitioner.
The other strength I do think we do have a little bit more capacity to do in an NP clinic is talk about education and really explore the patient’s understanding of not just their disease but their treatments and why we’re doing certain things. We have a lot of frustration, for want of a better word, with some of our people who are struggling with the why things are changing a little bit when the doctor keeps telling them they’re really happy with the scans and just digging a little bit more into understanding the disease stages itself and reassurance around what we’re monitoring and why we’re doing those kinds of things.
I think education’s a big one. I think we as nurses do have the capacity to take those things a little bit further, that sometimes people can feel a little bit pressured in what can feel like quite a tight time space with a consultant, whether private or public practice. And we do have that kind of scope. Now, I will also say that my appointment time slots are exactly the same as the consultants. So, we just approach what we’re trying to address a little bit differently.
Fiona McKay:
Yes, yeah. And look, we do hear that story again and again that people disclose the most to their MS Nurse or MS Nurse Practitioner of all their healthcare professionals. So, Tim, if you could expand on that a little bit. Could you tell me a little bit about some good experiences that you’ve had in relationships with your patients, in terms of outcomes or long-term support for them?
Tim O’Maley:
Certainly. And again, I do genuinely feel quite privileged to be able to call myself an MS Nurse and a Nurse Practitioner. Like Belinda, although she’s much younger than me, I’m old, been around forever and I’ve known some of my patients for 20 to 25 years. I was there when they were diagnosed and I’m still with them in some capacity. It is somewhat flattering, but it’s also sometimes a little bit scary that I do have some patients that say, “Do I have to see the doctor? Can’t I just keep seeing you?”
But that is also a good thing because they know if there’s something I cannot address in my scope or capacity, that they’re going to trust me that that’s going to go to the consultant and that will be fed back as to where to from here and what we can safely address and appropriately look at with them. From that point of view, I think it’s always really, kind of nice when you see people in the waiting room and you’ve got Tim’s clinic on one side and the neurology clinic on the other side, and you do actually see them quite excited that you’ve called them to come in with you.
So, no pressure, but it also does make you feel like, “Okay, that is a relationship where we might be looking at things that are that way as well.” I think I, again, am really lucky I work with some fantastic MS specialists. And they are really, really comfortable with pushing people into my clinics when there are things that they feel that I will address more appropriately with that person. And that again builds that trust, builds that follow-up, builds that relationship.
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s also, accessibility is a pretty big thing as well. We don’t have an MS hotline where I work. I’m the nurse on my own. My consultants are here in an MS capacity half a day a week. So not everything happens in a clinic space. Anyone that calls in, those messages come to me. And I do everything in my power to return those calls same day, if not the next day if possible. We can follow up with things we need a GP to do.
And leading back even into that economic side of things, we try to avoid bringing people into clinic as urgent hotspots unless we absolutely have to. We try to avoid them needing to go to emergency department, but we also try to clarify a little bit with some reassurance with how they’re talking to us about symptoms as well. Over that, just a tiny little bit into the nurse practitioner scope as well, I think it’s really important that we make sure our patients feel really comfortable, that not everything they are worried about is going to have anything to do with their MS.
So being really clear about how we can look at something that might not be related but still make them feel like that’s being included and addressed in some of those things. And as a strange thing to say in this, just as a one-off example, I also do migraine clinics here. And people with MS have a lot of headaches, which they may not necessarily feel are addressed as part of their MS. So, I can…in that instance, that’s just a strange, almost not MS example of addressing something as a separate entity with the same person and that level of trust they have.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, it sounds like you have a really excellent functional working relationship with the neurology team there. So how do you work together with them? Do you speak about patients in meetings and so on? And how do you work out who goes to which clinic and so on?
Tim O’Maley:
Yeah. Look, that’s an excellent question, Fiona. And again, I mentioned that patients do develop a trust with their MS Nurse, and that’s probably the thing that we appreciate the most about working with anyone living with a chronic disease. The other thing is it doesn’t matter whether you’re an MS Nurse in the community, any level in a hospital clinic or a research team or as a nurse practitioner, your neurologists trust us as well.
They trust us to make decisions, they trust us to give the appropriate information, and they definitely trust us to take things where we reach out, “I’m not sure” back to them, and that they then trust us to follow that up with the patient to keep that continuity going with those things. Again, I am a little bit lucky, but I will also say a little unlucky in that, like you said, I’ve got my consultants here in an MS capacity half a day a week. So, I really have to grab them and say, “Look, we’ve seen this. Are we worried about this?”
Or sometimes I’ll come back to a person and say, “Look, you suggested this, but I’ve spoken with them further. How do you feel about changing tactic on that?” So that nurse side of the relationship can sometimes see things that might be more beneficial to the patient than was picked up in the sometimes-rapid-fire questions with the consultants due to their constraints and timing and things like that. So, I said trust a lot of times, and it definitely flows both ways. We couldn’t do what we do without working with neurologists that trust us to make those decisions and the patients that trust us that we are not ignoring things that aren’t getting relayed back to us as a team of a whole, with that patient sitting at the middle of that.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, that’s right. And I know the neurologists really appreciate that their patients are receiving that holistic and really conscientious follow-up and care that they don’t necessarily have the time to address in their very limited appointment time.
Tim O’Maley:
And I might be just going off topic just a little bit here, Fiona, but I think something that with what we are realistically discussing is there are so many MS Nurses at the moment that are, I’ll say restricted, but employed in a hospital or a clinic or a research setting. We have unfortunately seen probably the biggest decline in MS Nurses in the community setting.
And I know having been somebody that had feet in both camps for quite a few years, there were things that I know I would address better with the person away from the hospital clinic environment. And a lot of us don’t have that opportunity anymore. And that is definitely a gap in where MS Nurses has really changed in the last five, if not, 10 years or so.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, absolutely.
Tim O’Maley:
Hospitals are great, but a clinic environment is also a clinic environment.
Fiona McKay:
Yes. Yep, 100%. And we’ll talk to that a little bit later when we speak about caring for our nurses. But just before we leave on the topic of nurse practitioners, Tim, I wondered if you could explain to us a little bit about the recent expansion of nurse practitioner prescribing rights to some of the key MS medications, and what’s the benefit of this for both the nurse practitioners and also the neurologists?
Tim O’Maley:
This was a fabulous breakthrough, for want of a better word. Obviously, working in MS, nurse practitioners have years and years and years of experience before they even become a nurse practitioner. We educate patients around immunotherapy medications. And in many cases, not just in an NP role, but in clinic roles, in Belinda’s role, in Belinda’s team, nurses would do all the work and then go to a junior doctor and ask them to do a prescription – for a drug that they had no experience with and didn’t really know, but again, they were trusting us that we were doing the right thing.
NPs now can prescribe the majority of immunotherapy medications. Now, it is important we don’t do that off our own bat. We are a team. We are working with the neurologists. We may be seeing a person that’s come in to discuss two or three different options, but if they make a decision with us, we can do that then and there. The advantages are continuity. It keeps things flowing. We’re not leaving the room to chase a doctor who might be in with another person to do it, or we’re saying, “Look, I don’t have someone around. I’ll pop it in the mail for you.”
And it’s also very flattering in that these are medications that general practitioners sometimes struggled to understand as to what was going on. We have that economics that comes in now where it’s very difficult for people to sometimes literally get to their GP in a time when scripts need to be done. This change certainly hasn’t seen more scripts. It’s hopefully just improving the continuity and the access for our patients to get these medications.
And this was a fabulous, fabulous thing. It took a lot of work and a lot of support from industry to actually get these changes through the PBAC, and it flowed on to pretty much all of the immunotherapy drugs that aren’t given in a hospital setting that we can do for patients that are treated at home.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, yeah. It’s just an amazing change to improve access really, isn’t it? Which is just fabulous.
Tim O’Maley:
Definitely. And look, from a very personal and self-centered point of view, it actually adds a lot of confidence when you are able to provide that prescription for that treatment to that patient right then and there in your capacity as an NP. That has been really, really good. I will obviously say that prescribing is not our core business, but there are still some restrictions placed on NP practice in terms of a little clause within most PBS medications called ‘Continuing Therapy Only.’
And when we look at the impact or even the cost for something like an MS immunotherapy drug versus something that is very routinely used to manage symptoms that we cannot prescribe, there’s a disconnect there as well. So again, the PBAC and the government has made some really good changes, and they will actually just improve access to patients and our capacity to provide them with that service there.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, absolutely. So, it really means that you’re now able to initiate a new therapy, whereas previously it was just continue one…
Tim O’Maley:
Correct.
Fiona McKay:
…that had been prescribed by a neurologist. Yeah, yeah. That’s a huge change.
Tim O’Maley:
Yeah, absolutely. Again, there are MS Nurses, not just MS Nurse Practitioners that know a person with this symptom should be on this medication, but then we have to still go and chase a medical officer to do the first script, even though it’s a dirt cheap incredibly safe medication.
Fiona McKay:
Yep. Yeah, 100%. Well, thank you very much for explaining that change to us, Tim. We might now move our discussion onto the International Nurses Day theme of caring for MS nurses. And I mentioned earlier that MS Australia leads an MS Nurses Working Group, which is comprised of key nursing experts, representatives from MS Australia’s Research and Policy teams, our MS Member Organisations, MS Nurses Australasia and MS researchers.
So, through our involvement in the working group, MS Australia is one of a number of key voices advocating in the MS Nurse/Nurse Practitioner space, and this is really critical advocacy work. Now, Belinda, you’re our highly valued chair of the group. And Tim, we absolutely love having you as a very vocal and passionate member of the group also.
From our ‘MS Nurse Care in Australia’ Report, there were a number of recommendations made to improve support for and access to MS Nurse care in Australia. -what do you think we can do to better support our MS Nurses and Nurse Practitioners? And some of this stems from the report, but also, I’d like to hear from your experience, Belinda, on what you think we can do to better support our nurses.
Belinda Bardsley:
Well, MS Nurses of Australasia is around to support, and has been for many years now to support and provide collaborative networks, and we try to do that where we can, but it’s really important to have MS Australia there to support us as well. We just don’t have the resources to do that ourselves alone. The MS Nurse Working Group is working hard to provide additional support. We’ve provided some templates for nurses to present business cases to their places of employment to try and work towards ongoing employment or to support their case for ongoing employment or to expand their MS Nurse cohort.
In some cases, that’s been successful. We’ve also written some letters to make the case on behalf of individual nurses who are finding it really difficult to sustain their case or to try and grow their service. So again, in some cases, that’s been successful as well. We’re lobbying government stakeholders and funding bodies to try and make the case for some investment in MS Nurses to expand our nursing workforce. We are also working towards credentialing and education that are manageable modules to improve potentially in rural and regional areas, particularly to improve the knowledge of nurses who are working in those areas to have skills in MS to be able to support the MS population.
We are working on scope of practice as well. We have a ‘Scope of Practice’ document in MSNA (MS Nurses Australasia) that is updated regularly, so that we can ensure that people working in the field have appropriate qualifications and understanding and knowledge. And we are also engaging with patient groups and doing awareness campaigns as well. So, we’re trying to tackle this from a whole range of areas and address the recommendations of the report.
Fiona McKay:
Could you explain a little bit more about the ‘Scope of Practice’? What does that involve?
Belinda Bardsley:
So, we’re just identifying the sorts of areas that MS Nurses need to be across in order to provide care. So, Tim and I worked on a document a few years ago, didn’t we, Tim? That looked at this and made sure that we had the areas that we were working on that were important, that needed to be factored in, in providing MS Nurse care, and that that was addressed. That can be found on the MS Nurses of Australasia website.
Tim O’Maley:
‘Scope of Practice’ was a very difficult thing to put together, but we have to build something that would really encompass and encourage nurses to take on MS as something that they felt was (worthwhile). But also, the capacity, as your experience and skill set developed, that evolved with you.
That was something that we really hope that our MS Nurse colleagues uses a little bit of drive and encouragement, but also supports what they do when, as Belinda said, people are trying to write business cases and getting traction for other people who may not necessarily understand why you would want to be an MS Specialist Nurse versus a general neurology neuroscience nurse as well.
Fiona McKay:
So, has the issue been that there are limitations to what you’re allowed to do, and you’re not allowed to work to your full scope of practice, or more the reverse?
Belinda Bardsley:
I think that just there’s not really a qualification for MS Nurses in Australia that’s been recognised to date. So, we wanted to have some clarification around what the expectation should be, and we’re working towards having that clarified.
Fiona McKay:
So, Belinda, I also just wanted to follow up on the education support for nurses in Australia. Now, there are some formalised education pathways, but I know that you also run a preceptorship program at the Austin. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit about those two things.
Belinda Bardsley:
Yeah, absolutely. So, for a number of years now, we’ve run a preceptorship program for people who are either working in the field of MS nursing or interested in moving into that field and/or clinical trials. So, they can learn by observation and participate in that program so that they can see how we run our service.
Not to say that we are doing things the best or the only way that things should be run, but it’s a way of coming and seeing how MS Nurses work. And it’s something that I’ve explored that might be something that we try and roll out across the country and so that people could participate in more of a fellowship program and go and explore this approach in different centers across the country. So that’s something we’re looking at within MSNA to see how that could work.
Fiona McKay:
Yeah, that’s fantastic.
Belinda Bardsley:
I think it’s important too to say that I also think that it’s really important that we strengthen our international ties. We’ve had international ties and involvement with the international organisation of MS Nurses, and Tim’s been involved for many, many years in correspondence and communication with them. We’ve always had a relationship with them for many years, and I think that they’ve faced extremely similar issues with us in terms of reducing numbers of MS nurses and dilution of the role of the MS Nurse in the UK.
That’s a big problem that they are facing, where some of the traditional roles that MS Nurses have performed have been now rolled out to other allied health professionals, and there’s concern about that.
Fiona McKay:
So there really is a lot of work that we still have to do, don’t we, in being able to support our MS Nurses and Nurse Practitioners in Australia. And MS Australia is taking a lot of the recommendations from the Nurses’ Report (MS Nurse Care in Australia) and the expert advice from the Nurses’ Working Group, and we’re engaging with many different stakeholders to advocate for greater support for MS Nurses and greater access to MS Nurses.
We’ve been in conversation with other disease organisations about improving access through sustainable models of nursing delivery, and we’re talking to tertiary institutions about education models (modules) for MS nursing and also to government with specific funding asks. So, Belinda, how important is it that this kind of advocacy work is being done by MS Australia on behalf of the group?
Belinda Bardsley:
Oh, it’s incredibly important. As I said, we couldn’t do that on our own. We just don’t have the capacity to do it ourselves. And it’s such an important thing to have the awareness of our role, the importance of our role. We can see the difference. From the Report, it’s clearly shown the difference in health outcomes. That’s my priority. I care about the patients doing better, seeing the difference that that makes when they have access to an MS Nurse.
I just want them to have that. Whether they take it up or not, I want them to have the option of engaging with an MS Nurse. That’s important to me because I can see the difference that it makes. I’m passionate about that. So, we’re really, really grateful for your support in trying to make that happen for everybody should they wish to take it up. So, thank you.
Fiona McKay:
Look, it’s been such an important partnership because we need to hear from you at the coalface what the needs are, and then we can do our advocacy work better. So, it’s been a really important partnership together.
So, thank you, Belinda and Tim, so much for your time with us this morning on the podcast. Thanks for being so generous with your time. We know that you are very time-poor and very hardworking, and for their expertise and their enthusiasm marking International Nurses Day with this focus on nurses and nurse practitioners.
Don’t forget to head to our website to read our International Nurses Day Report and learn more about MS Australia’s advocacy for MS Nurses and MS Nurse Practitioners. You can head to msaustralia.org.au/nurses. Thank you.
Voiceover:
Thanks for listening to The Raw Nerve, the official podcast of MS Australia. To hear more, subscribe to our podcast today at msaustralia.org.au/podcast.
