S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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health) scope of practice. The reason for their diagrammatic separateness and ‘dashed’ borders in the social world/arenas map is that that they are in an embryonic stage of positioning themselves as a defined and accepted group in the arena. They are few in number and have not been present for an extended period of time compared to other groups in the health actors’ arena. The present scope of practice of mental health nurse practitioners is clearly of benefit to the groups not only within the healthcare arena but also within the health service arena as they bring wider benefits to all within the same. As nurse practitioners are in the embryonic stage of establishing their existence and role(s) within the health service arena, a great deal of their benefits are expectations, but the present indicators legitimise them as positive. As a state-wide mental health administrator stated: We haven’t got many in the area that I work in, but I’m an advocate for the nurse

practitioners coming our way … they deliver very effective care, so as opportunities do arise, I would advocate strongly for mental health nurse practitioners. [T19, p. 11] Those anticipated benefits for administrators include cost-efficiencies and

economies of scale of service provision, as wages and salaries for GPs and psychiatrists (employment positions that are very difficult to recruit and retain) are significantly more . Further, it is anticipated that nurse practitioners will be a stable workforce in the remote field, and hence mitigate associated hidden costs and dislocations from burnout and ‘churn’ of staff turnover. For facilitators such as RFDS, nurse practitioners will provide additional and greater degree of specialist input into mental health decision making, such as when evacuations or emergency examination orders (EEOs) are being considered. A greater