The Role of Advanced Practice Nurses in Healthcare
Discuss about the Impact Of Information And Communication Technologies.
Advanced practice nurses play a pivotal role in the healthcare industry as the primary care providers who have the responsibility of providing preventive care to the citizens of the nation. They may belong to different varities of domains like that of the nurse midwives, nurse anaesthetics, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and others. They are mainly seen to perform the responsibility to treat and help in diagnosing of different types of illness. They are also seen to a provide various forms of suggestions on the healthcare issues (Lavoie et al., 2016). They participate in the management of a lage varieties of chronic diseases. They work to engage in continuous education. Such nurses have seen to possess the master’s degree (Oftedal et al., 2017). They are mainly seen to provide expert nursing care as well as play a leading role in the development of clinical guidelines and protocols. They are mainly seen to promote the utilisation of evidences. They are also seen to provide expert support as well as consultation and at the same time ensure facilitation of system change.
They are seen to portray specific types of rles and for that they are considered an important part of the healthcare service (Cooper et al., 2015). They are seen to provide the primary acute as well as specialty health services across life span. They perform these through the assessment, diagnosis as well as treatment of the illness as well as injuries. They are seen to care for patients as well as interact with the service users and are therefore seen to serve as a liaison. This liaison between the doctors as well as families. Their advanced level of training mainly means that they are possessing higher levels of intellect as well as knowledge in compasrison to that of their their registered nurses’ counterparts. They are mainly seen to take part in greater decision-making ability. They are also seen to expertise in different areas. This is mainly seen to include activities like like diagnosis as well as assessment. It also contains planning, and implementation. Moreover, evaluation of healthcare is also important and thereby record keeping. It is seen that nurses mainly possess a long history of being subservient to the physicans and also to the healthcare systems under which they are seen to be working (Mpotos et al., 2015). However, such professionals develop the ability of breaking the glass ceilings and thereby becoming more autonomous in their approach to different practices. They are also seen to develop the ability of relying on their own knowledge. Reaserchers state that they are also able take their own decisions regarding health of the patient (Cooper et al., 2015).
Types of Advanced Practice Nurses
They have a huge number of function in the clinical settings. They diagnose patients as they come in and perform different types of physical exams. They also perform psychosocial, psychological, functional as well as developmental tests and diagnostics. They are also seen to order lab tests as well as interpret results. They also develop differential diagnosis and maintain patient records (Schober et al., 2016). They also ensure the patient privacy and clinic as well as hospital compliance. They are also seen to evaluate progress of patients and their responses to various types of treatments for modifying treatment and other care plans as necessary. They are also seen to provide counselling of patients as well as families and thereby refer patients to other treatments and facilities (Wilson et al., 2018). They are also seen to provide consultations to patients who have yet to choose different courses of action and thereby dispense medications to different patients. Dispensing medications to patients and thereby participating in different research studies are some of their other activities
Advanced practice nurses require a higher level of education that mainly includes a Master of science in nursing at the minimum level. Through the process of education, they are expected to gain a larger skill set which has increased assessment abilities. They are also seen to have the skill of planning for and implementing for care as well as the competency for offering diagnosis (O’connor, 2016). They are seen to practice considerably higher level of autonomy. This is mainly due to the higher level of education. Advanced practice registered nurses are often seen to make more decisions about care of their patients as they have the requisite amount of knowledge and authority to do so (Cowper, Dowding & Barrett, 2015). One of the interesting features is that they have the capability to play an expanded role in managing individual as well as group care. They are also seen to collaborate directly with their patients or with their clients providing advanced care that helps to maximise the positive outcomes. They are also seen to develop in ways by which they can take up the responsibility for management both physical as well as labour resources as well as to ensure that those working with them are performing ethically and even within the boundaries of laws (Nazarko, 2016). Such kinds of nurses are also seen to apply for different types of prescriptive authorities and can thereby administer certain levels of controlled substances depending upon what state they are in. They are also seen to gain the ability for admitting patients into different healthcare facilities.
Education and Requirements for Becoming an Advanced Practice Nurse
Four different types of positions are mainly seen to be occupied by the advance care nurses. The first one can be said as the certified Nurse midwives. They are mainly seen to work with the women belonging to the age cohort of adolescence to that of the time of menopause. They are mainly seen to provide gynaecological as well as primary healthcare. Although they provide care to women of all ages, they are mainly focused on the reproductive health of patients. Another domain is the certified registered nurse anaesthetists. They are mainly seen to work with anaesthesia and are one of the highest paid nursing specialists (Hill, 2015). They are seen to administer anaesthetics as during the time of their surgery and assist patients during the time of pain during childbirth as well as oversee conscious sedation. The Clinical Nurse specialist is another domain of advanced care nursing. Here the nurses become experts in a particular specialty (Cooper et al., 2015).. This might be a specific type of population like old patients, women or child or it may be a special care like cardiovascular, orthopaedic and any others. They are often seen to act as leaders and even as managers. They also act as consultants .They thereby help to make decisions about the care that patient would receive or make recommendations about how a hospital unit should run. The last domain of nursing is called the nurse practitioners. They are seen to specialize in one area or expertise. Unlike the clinical nurse specialists who are mainly seen to educate and consult, nurse practitioners are seen to provide direct care. They are seen to be involved in a greater level of autonomy and this is seen top include prescriptive authority in their approach.
The journey of healthcare professional is not an easy pathway when they try to become advanced nursing practioner. Individuals need to first complete the important phase of the four years of bachelors’ degree in nursing. This should be done to in order to pass the exam for the registered nurses. They then require obtaining a nursing license. Then they have to work for some durations of about one or two years as that they can gain some types of nursing experiences. After that they are seen to complete a one to three years of master’s program or equivalent in a nursing specialty and then they can hope of being an advances nursing professionals. Therefore one can define the role of the advanced practitioner nurse is mainly a kind of registered nurses who have developed expert knowledge base and have become skilfull with complex and various types of decision making skills. They also develop clinical competencies that help to attend different forms of expanded practices.
References:
Cooper, A., Dowding, D., & Barrett, D. (2015). The impact of new information and communication technologies on the development of advanced practice. Advanced nursing practice: changing healthcare in a changing world. London: Palgrave, 288-301.
Hill, L. M. (2015). Management of implantable cardioverter defibrillators in advanced heart failure: an exploratory study of heart failure patients’, carers’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives (Doctoral dissertation, Ulster University).
Lavoie, M., Godin, G., Vézina-Im, L. A., Blondeau, D., Martineau, I., & Roy, L. (2016). Psychosocial determinants of nurses’ intention to practise euthanasia in palliative care. Nursing ethics, 23(1), 48-60.
Mpotos, N., Decaluwe, K., Van Belleghem, V., Cleymans, N., Raemaekers, J., Derese, A., … & Monsieurs, K. G. (2015). Automated testing combined with automated retraining to improve CPR skill level in emergency nurses. Nurse education in practice, 15(3), 212-217.
Nazarko, L. (2016). Revalidation and developing advanced nursing practice. Nurse Prescribing, 14(4), 194-204.
O’Connor, T. (2016). So what’s a clinical nurse specialist exactly?. Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand, 22(2), 15.
Oftedal, B., Kolltveit, B. C. H., Zoffmann, V., Hörnsten, Å., & Graue, M. (2017). Learning to practise the Guided Self?Determination approach in type 2 diabetes in primary care: A qualitative pilot study. Nursing open, 4(3), 134-142.
Schober, M. M., Gerrish, K., & McDonnell, A. (2016). Development of a conceptual policy framework for advanced practice nursing: an ethnographic study. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(6), 1313-1324.
Wilson, M., Oliver, P., & Malpas, P. (2018). Nurses’ views on legalising assisted dying in New Zealand: A cross-sectional study. International journal of nursing studies