Advanced Practice Competencies: Nurse Practitioner

Advanced Practice Competencies 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

They assess, diagnose and treat acute and chronic illnesses as well as preventative healthcare for individuals and families. As their care is family-centered, they must also be able to understand the relevance of the family’s identified community. In addition to the nine essentials as outlined by the AACN, the FNP must meet competencies in advanced health assessment skills in order to differentiate between normal and abnormal findings. They should able to use screening and diagnostic strategies to develop diagnosis and they must be able to prescribe medications to enable them to work as independent practitioners (Competencies for Nurse Practitioners, 2012). In order to meet these competencies, the Consensus Model for APRN Regulation (2008) requires three separate graduate-level courses in advanced physiology and pathophysiology, health assessment and pharmacology as well as appropriate clinical experiences across the age

Acting as a liaison between the nursing staff and other members of the administrative staff, they are often in high-level management roles. Though not in a direct patient contact role, they are often involved in the policy making within an organization affecting patient care (Ferguson-Pare, 2003). The nurse administrator meets the same competencies in the nine essential areas, but have additional competencies in organizational and system leadership, communication and relationship management, knowledge of health care environment, as well as business skills and principles (AONE,