The Role of the Advanced Practice Nurse - Essay Sample

Introduction

According to the International Council for Nursing, an Advanced Practice Nurses (APN) is a registered nurse who has expertise his or her knowledge and acquired complex decision-making skills and has become competent in the clinical field, to expand their practice in the field. APNs have more critical roles than the ordinary nurses and they not only concerned with the welfare of the patient but the patient's family and society at large. The roles of APNs are equated to those of a medical physician. Hamric identifies three qualifications of an APN which he refers to as the primary criteria for Advanced Practice Nursing. Besides the three he also discusses central competency and the core competencies. This article aims to analyze the primary criteria as discussed by Hamric and compare to the regulatory vision as described in the APRN Consensus Model.

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The three primary criteria that Hamric discusses are graduate education, certification and practice focused on patient and family (Hamric et al., 2018). Each of the three is discussed below and compared with the APRN Consensus Model. Education is one of the criteria used to define an APN (Hamric et al., 2018). In fact, in the definition given by the International Council for Nursing (ICN), a master's degree is recommended for entry into the advanced practice level. Education is necessary as it endows an individual with the required knowledge both from books and from experts and other professionals in the field. For one to qualify to be an advanced practice nurse, he or she must have had enough education to distinct from the usual nursing practitioners. Education is also discussed in the consensus model where the model talks of completion of undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate certificates and diplomas.

Certification is the other element that Hamric discusses. Certification is the recognition that one has undergone the education system and acquired knowledge and skills (Hamric et al., 2018). Certification means that one has met the standards required by profession. Accreditation in most cases is done by the institutions that offered education in addition to other bodies that need to recognize the completion of education. Certification is better done by recognized institutions to avoid the credibility and the quality of the knowledge and skills acquired. The Consensus Model also considers certification as an element to determine the credibility of an APN.

The third criteria that Hamric use is a practice which must be focused on patient, family or in most cases both (Hamric et al., 2018). Practice helps an individual to gain experience in the field to increase efficiency at work. An APN who has done some practice and gained hands-on experience is more likely to perform better than one who has never done practice in the field. Practice is not discussed in the APRN Consensus Model. Instead, they have talked of two other elements, accreditation and licensure, which Hamric does not discuss.

Conclusion

All in all, Advanced Practice Nursing has greatly helped the field of medicine and general health. The services of the APNs have greatly benefited the society especially with the emergence of chronic and terminal diseases. They have been of great importance mainly because of their specialties in being a nurse practitioner, a clinical nurse specialist, a nurse midwife or a nurse anesthetist. They have helped in providing primary health care and followed up programs and also reducing the burdens carried solely by physicians. Apart from that, they have also helped reduce the costs of treatment besides other benefits.

References

Hamric, AB., Hanson, CM, Tracy, MF and O'Grady, ET (2018). Advanced practice nursing: An integrative approach (6th edition) by Elsevier.

NP and AP Roles - ICN Nurse Practitioner / Advanced Practice Nursing Network. Retrieved from https://international.aanp.org/Practice/APNRoles.