Family health nursing: the education programme for the WHO

Primary care in remote and rural areas has often been left behind by developments in health services in the UK, which tend to focus on densely populated urban areas. At the same time, the demands on the service have changed. The diminishing number of, and in some areas need for, triple duty and double duty nurses and midwives suggests that there is a need for piloting new roles to see if alternative models of care delivery may be more appropriate in the 21st century. The concept of the family health nurse (FHN) emerged from the World Health Organization’s