As momentum builds for new Medicare funding for practice nurses, the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association says we must do more than create new item numbers to realise their full potential.

Here, president Denise Lyons argues funding reform must be matched by clearer career pathways and broader support for nurses to work to their full scope.

My perspective on primary healthcare nursing has been shaped over a long and varied career.

I have worked as a nurse across two continents, from hospital emergency departments and children’s wards, to a Navajo reservation in Arizona and vaccination clinics in the Torres Strait during the pandemic.