Rural Americans bear a disproportionate cardiovascular burden while facing limited access to cardiology services. This brief report proposes a workforce and practice framework for rural primary care nurse practitioners. The solution to rural cardiology scarcity is not unsupported specialty-level practice, but investment in nurse practitioner preparation and practice infrastructure. Grounded in established competencies, the framework distinguishes routine cardiovascular care, supported primary care requiring preparation and consultation, and specialty or escalated care. Recommendations emphasize curricular integration, supervised clinical experience, competency validation, health system safeguards, and consultation networks. Rural scarcity should strengthen primary care capacity, not lower standards or blur clinical boundaries.
A cross-sectional pilot study evaluated the feasibility of the Anthropometric Measurements in Primary Care survey among 10 primary care clinicians. Feasibility was assessed using completion time, item completion, and survey administration. The median completion time was 6.9 minutes, with no missing data or administration problems. Exploratory Cronbach α estimates were .84 for knowledge, .31 for attitude, .74 for external barriers, and .84 for overall barriers. Given the small, homogeneous sample, these estimates are preliminary and unstable. Findings provide preliminary evidence of feasibility within this sample and support continued evaluation of the survey in a larger, more diverse clinician population.
