S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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Coyle, Al-Motlaq, Mills, Francis and Birks (2010) highlighted the breadth of remote nurses’ duties by classifying them into four groups: clinical, health education and promotion, administration and general. While these four classifications describe remote duties in general, they are also relevant to the delivery of remote mental healthcare. For remote generalist nurses: • clinical duties relate to any nursing care delivered for a mental health patient, for example, administering a depot psychiatric medication injection; • health education and promotion duties could include a ‘short clinical intervention’ of Motivational Interviewing concerning the link between cannabis and psychosis, and advising a patient to cease or reduce their level of illicit drug use; • administration tasks could include completing mental health patient documentation, such as charting medications or ensuring mental health Community Treatment Orders are current; and • general duties directly or indirectly relate to the mental health patient, for example, transporting the patient from their residence to the primary healthcare for an appointment. Coyle et al.’s (2010) classification of remote nurses’ job tasks demonstrates the breadth of their role when operating within any of the many nursing ‘specialty streams’, which they are required to regularly assume, even simultaneously. Kruske et al. (2008) argued that the generalist role of remote nurses increases as the population declines, and therefore, the more remotely nurses are located, the more generalist the nature of their work. Montour, Baumann, Blythe and Hunsberger (2009) agreed that ‘[remote] nursing practice is generalist in nature, requiring personal flexibility