The role of the Emergency Nurse Practitioner (ENP) has been around for decades and over the years most trusts are now employing nurse practitioners to manage the minors streams.
However, many trusts still use junior locum medical staff to fill gaps in their minor injury service rota if an ENP is off sick or there is a shortfall of staff. This, at least to us, is counter intuitive as ENPs/ECPs are likely to have far more experience in dealing with this particular stream of Emergency Department work. Therefore they are far less likely to bother consultants or registrars for reviews of patients unless absolutely necessary and will also return a greater number of patients seen per hour.
Many of our ENPs will also be independent nurse prescribers so can take responsibility of appropriately prescribing. They will see patients that have been streamed to the minors area with common illnesses
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