Credentialing For Advance Nurse Practitioner - Paper Example

Introduction

Credentialing is the process of recognizing the level at which a nurse has attained. It is the formal recognition of the nurse's achievement in the field of nursing. In most cases, it is never about the job title, but the recognition of level of practice, nurses' skills and the level of expertise. For a nurse to meet the credentialing purpose, they must have met the requirement of the eligibility level, qualifications, competence and experience. Most importantly, nurses must meet the requirements of a credential with how advanced practice has been laid down. Advance practice is the level of practice where all practitioners have acquired masters' education. They have the skill of treating and diagnosing patients, making independent decisions in the assessment, authority and freedom to act. This paper details the benefits and problems of Credentialing for Advance Nurse Practitioners.

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To credential all nurses, they must certify the criteria of advanced level of practice so as to continue developing their particular profession. These sets of criteria enable the nursing profession to be entirely recognized. Examples of these criteria include a nurse qualification in health assessment, a clinical reference verifying nurse competence in the kind of work participated in and a relevant master's degree. With these criteria for credentialing, they endorse nursing practice that is exceptional and create great routes for the nurses striving to work at advanced levels. There are bodies that are responsible for checking whether certain organizations demonstrate professional nurse work, good patient's outcome and high quality nursing. American Nurses Credential Center (ANCC) is an example of these bodies. There are benefits and in the same case problems of credentialing nurses in advanced practice.

Credentialing is useful to Advanced Practice Registered Nursing because with this, APRN scope of practice is acknowledged; professional standards of practice are enforced, third party billing for services is enabled and there is promotion of accountability to practice. Credentialing has promoted a number of services such as promoting on-site set up of workstations and networks, creating necessary forms of policies and regulations to be followed, figuring out payrolls service for nurses and their payroll policies, creating employee handbook and hiring policies and most of all working with lenders in the best way so as to protect credit image in case of need of a business loan.

Credentialed nurses work differently from non-credentialed ones. Those credentialed provide better care to patients and in a standardized manner. The extent of credentialing reaches to patients who need better health care from advanced technologies like of telemedicine, and emergency care emerging from disasters such as terrorism and trauma. Credentialing offers a curriculum transformation that is promising to Nursing Educators, Nursing Administrators and a workforce that will help generations to come. It is also helpful to clinical education where innovative approaches are established. Health care systems are as well transformed and this results to great benefits to patients. Educational practices are identified and implemented leading to practice acumen, developing optimal nursing skills and enabling meeting goals endorsed by National Nursing Organization.

Credentialing consistently provides cost-effective patient care in many health care institutions and provide high quality Nurses. Today, with the majority of credentialed Nurses, they are employed in primary Health care settings, with most providing mental health services, Obstetrics and proving women's Health. One hallmark of credentialing is to improve health care outcome, health promotion, to provide care directed to future illness prevention and most importantly to provide high quality health care to diverse populations in wide variety regions. Overcoming barriers resulting from credentialing practice in today's environment will lead to improving health care for traditionally undeserved population in the outcast.

Bodies responsible for credentialing nurses have experienced many challenges; both internal and external. Like in the case, many students who want to be qualified nurses have not met the qualifications to be credentialed. Other students lack financial resources to be credentialed since for one to be credentialed, these bodies require some funds to manage the bodies, to administer credentialing and to run the whole process. Squeezed budget leads to reduced salaries all through the higher education system thus resulting to increased gap between salaries offered for teaching operation and salaries offered for practice.

Educational Institutions that do not have laid down faculty practice plans face more challenges for retaining and supporting faculties that need to consistently practice to keep their license and certification in addition to meeting tenure criteria and teaching. Supervision of credentialed nurses may increase faculty workload, certain tasks that were not planned for. In other cases, smaller educational institutions do not have additional facilities and institutional structures that are necessary to accommodate the credentialed nurses, and as well they do not have facilities to develop these programs of credentialing. While credentialing offers much promise for future workloads, there are few advanced practice graduates due to reduced clinical faculty thus lowering credentialing rate. This is a great challenge to the society. This is because the precise time they are needed to address the healthcare challenge they will not be available due to their reduced number (Deutsch and Mobley, 1999).

Admission to this programme is so difficult because of the selective nature of these bodies and limited spaces for qualified applicants. The cost of the programme is also a great challenge to the potential applicants whose finances are limited by the current economic downturn.

There is limited National funding to successful bodies of credentialing. They require funds for their educators from educational institutions. There are higher chances of lack of willingness to precept students due to unavailability of incentives that contribute greatly in serving the profession. Most preceptors are unable to compensate the student with nonfinancial benefits and teaching roles in line with the amount of funds the students have provided. Examples of nonfinancial benefits include access to educational resources and faculty titles. In a situation where a student is unsuccessful in applying for credentials, the student incurs other charges in reapplying this resulting to one incurring other extra costs. Credentialing application hence becomes an expensive process (Abraham and Reel, 2007).

Laws and regulations are examples of barriers that come up with credentialing where they limit hospitalized patients' access to their providers of choice. Individual hospital bylaws are also great barriers. When these barriers are removed, consumer choice widens hence promoting better health care since a patient is treated by a nurse of their choice. Continuity of care is mostly blocked when patients are not allowed to access privileged facilities in the hospitals they are admitted in. When nurses are required to follow all Advanced Practice registered Nursing orders, thus delaying critical care. With this inappropriate act, it can diminish health quality.

Conclusion

In conclusion, increasing the number of credentialing bodies and other primary care providers is one of the major solutions to health care problems in the society. This is because nurses are able to provide seamless follow-up care, disease prevention, health promotion, care during illness and care from initial intake. Credentialing of nurses has shown to be of great benefit hence its renewal periodically for its useful purpose. Credentialing is shown to be a great pathway to success with its benefits. It creates commitment to practice positive nursing skills that are helpful to the society and demonstrate the nurse's expertise and earn recognition for the entire nursing profession.

Referencing

Deutsch, S., & Mobley, C. S. (2005). The credentialing handbook. Gaithersburg, MEd: Aspen Publishers.

Reel, S. J., & Abraham, I. L. (2007). Business and legal essentials for nurse practitioners: From negotiating your first job through owning a practice. St. Louis, Mo: Mosby Elsevier.