There are many roles and areas of practice available to graduates with a master’s degree in nursing. Changes in healthcare resulting from the passage of the Affordable Care Act offer new and innovative roles for nurses. Among these roles are direct care practice roles as a Nurse Practitioner (NP) in family care, gerontology or adult health. Indirect care roles as a Nurse Educator, Nurse Administrator, or Nurse Informaticist are also options graduates of master’s program may choose. Regardless of the path chosen, there are core competencies that must be met for each, in addition to specific competencies related to the area of practice chosen. This paper will compare and contrast the roles of Family Nurse
Reflecting on the past seven weeks I have acquired countless knowledge, which I will use to further strengthen my profession as an Advanced Practice Nurse. The course allowed me to think beyond my current practice knowledge and acquired innovative ways to evaluate the situation at hand. The learning objective in program outcome four helps set standards that I will use to guide my clinical practice to meet various healthcare needs. Using the case studies has helped to further enhance my knowledge on disease physiological state, using differential diagnosis, disease manifestations, and clinical presentation. It has also taught me the skills on how to differentiate between similar diagnoses to properly identify the problem and treat the patients.
What is the projected demand for workers in the health care field over the next 20 years?
The shortage of primary care physicians has been a problem in health care system and will continue to the next decade due to increasing of aging population. According to National Governors Association (NAG) (2012), the growth of the aging population combined with the initiative of the Affordable Care Act, the problem of primary care providers shortage is worsening. Nurse Practitioners (NPs) are educated and prepared to perform primary care services as physicians do. More importantly, studies showed that NPs’ role as primary care providers achieve equal or higher patient satisfaction rates (Evangelista et al., 2011, Albers-Heitner et al., 2013). These studies illustrates that NPs can play a key role in providing services to health care market.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has identified nine essentials that are incorporated into master’s nursing programs in order to help guide the practice of advance practice nurse (APN). Essential II outlines how an APN can utilize organizational and systems leadership to promote safer and more cost effective care to patients. By incorporating effective leadership skills, APN’s can impact healthcare reform and quality improvements for the patient, institution and the community. According to the American Association of College of Nursing (2011), a effective leader assumes and applies the skills of communication, collaboration, negotiation, delegation, and coordination. APN’s must establish and maintain healthy working relationships
Advanced practice nurses (APN) have a vital role in the future of health care, especially since the enactment of the Affordable Health Care Act. With more citizens having health insurance coverage they will be seeking health care providers, and there are not enough physicians to care for them all. According to Letiziam (2014), advance practice nurses are licensed autonomous health care providers that have been trained to evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients and their conditions. Advanced practice nursing is an umbrella that covers four separate roles of nurses, this includes: the certified nurse midwife (CNM), certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), certified nurse practitioner (CNP), and certified nurse specialist (CNS).
According to Garment (2013), “The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) estimates that the U.S. will face a physician shortage of over 90,000 physicians by 2020; a figure that’s expected to reach over 130,000 by 2025” (p.4). The increasing amount of money required for health care services from a physician is a driving force to pursue alternative ways of receiving primary care. According to The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (2013), “NPs in a physician practice potentially decreased the cost of patient visits by as much as one third, particularly when seeing patients in an independent, rather than complementary, manner” (p. 2). NPs are maintaining the standard of care and for a lesser amount for patients to pay. Mid-level practitioners are completing the same amount of work and improving the quality of care. According to Garment (2013), “However, decades of studies have demonstrated that, when permitted to practice to the full extent of their training, NPs and Pas can perform a majority of the tasks that physicians do while providing the same quality of care” (p. 2). In addition to providing the same standard of care for less money, there is a reduced salary expense when going from a base physician salary to a mid-level
Jessica, I agree with you 100%. The differences and variation in the ANP scope of practice among the nation, does not allow for others especially legislators, to have a clear view of the ANP nurse and what it can be accomplish it all the restrictions and barriers were eliminated. It will also change the public perception and attitudes towards nurse practitioners. I firmly believe that NPs have not only the power, but the ability to improve and make sustaintials changes to our health care system, Excellent
Role of Graduate Nurse in Informatics are: 1) computer generated nursing care plan for each patient. 2) reminder and prompts that appear during documentation to ensure comprehensive charting. 3) help as a communication aid to other health care professionals taking care of the same patient. For example, Electronic Health Record.
However, despite the many difficulties, nurse leaders need to promote a working environment that is open to embracing change that is backed by evidence-based practices. With the correct balanced of quality patient centered care, financial accountability, and the innovation of evidence-based researched care, nurse leaders can lead other nurses to uphold these ambitious standards. Furthermore, by questioning outdated processes, conducting nursing research, and showing enthusiasm for evidence-based practices, the healthcare industry can be strengthened one nurse at a
Advance Practice Nurses advocate for health promotion, educate patients and the public on the prevention of illness and injury, provide care and assist in cure, participate in rehabilitation, and provide support. No other health care professional has such a broad and far-reaching role. The key factor in caring for the patient’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs in today’s society is for nurses to apply their evidence -based knowledge and skills in providing holistic care . Nurses must be able to bring analysis and utilize their critical thinking skills to address each patient’s problem based on scientific disciplines and nursing theoretical models to help their patients achieve their highest level of
The purpose of this review of literature article was to create a conceptual framework model of practice recommendations and interventions that can be used to acknowledge the benefit of expanding nurse practitioner scope of practice (SOP); develop a uniform nationwide consensus APRN SOP; and reveal evidence that shows that poor patient healthcare outcomes can occur as a result of restricted NP scope of practice due to barriers created by either physician-related, political, and/or organizational opposition.
The Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program has helped me to achieve the goal of outcome six by enabling me to critically analyze policy, laws, and ethics to develop, evaluate, and advocate for change that shapes financing, regulation, and delivery of nursing and health care services. At the start of the DNP program my knowledge of health policy, laws and ethics were very limited. Now since taking the DNP program, I feel I have improved knowledge and leadership skills in the development and implementation of institutional, local, state, federal, and international health policy. Examples of a critical event that have inspired my growth in the DNP program include DNP-III assignment three on healthcare policies and practices. The assignment describes
The great importance of being prepared for our future role as an advanced practitioner nurse is to enhance our knowledge, the proneness to participate in the new world, and understanding that praxis no only cares for the concern of the facts but also how people involved in such facts, what we can learn from them and assist in their transformation. This means that the practices not only seeks to improve practice nursing but also teach to participate in building the knowledge and thus achieve freedom, independence and autonomy of the profession in the health area (Kagan, Smith, Cowling & Chinn, 2009).
Locate a nursing research journal article that has been written within the last five years and discuss the following questions on your discussion post. Attach the article to the research post.