Awareness and acceptance of the nurse practitioner role in one BC health authority.

The Interior Health Authority (IH) is one of six health authorities in British Columbia, whose goal of delivering the best possible healthcare services to its residents requires proven and innovative healthcare delivery strategies. The nurse practitioner initiative is one such strategy used by IH. The following paper describes marketing strategies and early evaluation results of the awareness and acceptance of the nurse practitioner (NP) role in IH.

Community of practice: a nurse practitioner collaborative model.

A study was undertaken with nurse practitioners (NPs) in 2008-2009 to examine post-legislation role development in British Columbia. The authors used a participatory action research approach to engage NPs in social investigation, education and action, and to explore, from the participants' perspective, how collaboration advances NP role integration in primary healthcare. A particular discovery of the study was the Interior Health Authority Community of Practice (CoP) established in collaboration with health leaders and NPs.