Registered Nurses in Primary Care: Your Time Is Now.

Primary care is described as the front door of the healthcare system (Kiran 2022). Defined more than 30 years ago, primary care is a model of healthcare that includes first-contact care, continuity of care, comprehensiveness and coordination (Starfield 1994). For a patient, it is their entry point to the rest of the healthcare system, and ideally, the place where they go to have most of their healthcare needs met by the same provider over time. Primary care is a component of primary healthcare, which is a broader approach that includes public health as well as policy, action and empowerment strategies involving multiple sectors (WHO n.d.). While Canada has made improvements in primary care delivery, its performance still lags behind that of other countries (Duong and Vogel 2023). One of its shortfalls is accessibility. More than 6.5 million people in Canada do not have access to primary care (Duong and Vogel 2023). This is concerning, and even more so because the population is aging, and many people have one or more chronic illnesses needing ongoing follow-up (Public Health Agency of Canada 2022) and social determinants of health requiring action (Andermann et al. 2016).