The Nurse Practicioner Agricultural Study

Rural health care practitioners deliver first line health care services to farm families across America. Nurse practitioners are especially suited to rural practice because they require less capital support than physicians and often prefer the autonomy of rural practice (Cooper, Henderson, and Dietrich, 1998). Agriculture poses unique health hazards that cause it to rank in the top four most hazardous industries each year (National Safety Council, 2002). Nurse practitioners may not be aware of the health risks to their clients who reside on or visit farms. As front line health care providers it is essential that nurse practitioners understand the agriculturally related health risks faced by their clients in order to deliver appropriate care. The purpose of this project is to examine nurse practitioners' knowledge about and practice of farm health and safety issues. The specific aims are to; 1) Determine nurse practitioners' perceptions about agricultural health and safety. 2) Determine how nurse practitioners use an agricultural health context within their clinical practice. 3) Determine methods of education that nurse practitioners would use to leam more about agricultural health and safety issues. A 17-item survey modified for Prince's (2001) farm health study will be used to collect data. States will be stratefied based on rural population, number of farms, and number of nurse practitioners. Mailing lists of licensed nurse practitioners will be obtained from the Boards of Nursing of states meeting the stratefication criteria. Subjects will be randomly selected (n=175) from each strata (state) ~for a total sample size of 2200. Surveys will be mailed to each nurse practitioner selected for the study. Simple descriptive statistics, bivariate correlational analysis and multiple regression analysis will be used to produce the model that best predicts the nurse practitioners' knowledge and perception of farm health. Findings from this study will help identify both the content and method of delivery that nurse practitioners might find useful for leaming about agricultural health topics.