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The last three decades have seen exponential growth in the capacity and demand for health care in the developed world. Rapid developments and sophisticated advances in science have enabled the delivery of a level of treatment and care that was previously unimaginable.

Health’s continued evolution demands a high level of adaptive capacity from the nursing and midwifery professions, to enable them to keep pace with developments. Education for nurses and midwives must produce graduates that have the capacity to practice in this dynamic environment.

These developments have brought many opportunities and positive outcomes for nursing and midwifery: university education for nurses has now existed for more than twenty years and nurses’ and midwives’ scopes of practice have expanded and advanced to unparalleled levels, as the nurse and midwife practitioners demonstrate.
Now there’s not a lot of research that I could find that examines the relationship between nurses and other health professionals. There was a bit of work that identified that there are perhaps four different areas that you could say come up when you are looking at how the different professional groups work together and this is particularly in relation to allied health professionals and nursing.
• Ideological differences: suggested at times between where the different groups are coming from and what they’re attempting to achieve.
• Unequal power relationships: which we see particularly around medicine.
• Role overlap and confusion: the issue around the grey areas around role boundaries and there is sometimes a lack of clarity around who is the most appropriate group to undertake a certain piece of work.

Now I’ve got some definitions that I’ve pulled from various places:
Nursing encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings. Nursing includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people. Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are also key nursing roles.

Skilled nursing care provides health care related to skilled rehabilitation services, observation
and assessment of the patient’s condition, patient teaching and training, direct skilled nursing
services (such as tube feedings), and management and evaluation of the patient’s care plan
(Hawryluk, 1999). People who need close monitoring during and after hospitalization and
those progressing toward independent care are recognized as having skilled nursing needs. An
RN must be in charge of the care. The designation of skilled care originated in Medicare and
Medicaid legislation and has been adopted by insurers and managed-care providers. The
assumption is that all hospital care requires skilled nursing care but that only some long-term care requires skilled nursing. Long-term acute care and transitional care qualify as providing
skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing care also may take place in nursing homes designated
as skilled nursing facilities, often referred to as SNFs (pronounced “sniffs”) and in the home.
Reimbursement for skilled nursing care provided outside the hospital depends on careful documentation by the care provider of the specific skilled nursing tasks required by the patient.

Teaching is a major role of the nurse in restoring health, promoting
health and preventing illness. When a person is ill, the nurse
demonstrates things the patient can do to help with recovery. For
example, nurses teach patients to cough and breathe deeply after
surgery to prevent lung complications. They show patients how to
walk on crutches. They teach people with diabetes to monitor their
blood sugar.
Whenever the nurse works with a patient, the nurse uses the
opportunity to teach that person about self-care. Nurses teach both
patients and their families about proper diet and nutrition, cleanliness
and hygiene, exercise, sleep and rest and all the other aspects of a
healthy life.
Before the patient leaves the hospital, the nurse teaches the patient
and family about care at home. For example, nurses teach family
members how to bathe the person or wash his or her hair in bed,
and how to feed the person or change dressings.
Nurses teach people how to minimize the effects of disability so that
they will have the best quality of life.
Nurses are with people during the most critical times of their lives.
Nurses are with people when they are born, when they are injured or
ill, when they die. People share the most intimate details of their
lives with nurses; they undress for nurses, and trust them to
perform painful procedures.
Nurses are at the bedside of the sick and suffering 24 hours a day.
They are there when patients cannot sleep because of pain or fear
or loneliness. They are there to feed patients, bathe them, and to
support them.
Nurses have a long history of caring for the patient and speaking for
his or her needs. That is what advocacy is about: supporting the
patient, speaking on that person’s behalf, and interceding when
necessary. This advocacy is a part of the nurse’s caring and a part
of the closeness and trust between nurse and patient that gives
nursing a very special place in health care.