Advanced Nurse Practice

The Institute of Medicine report in 2011, provided recommendations that further enhanced the roles of the APNs. The report by IOM proposed for nurses to be allowed to practice to the extent of their training and emphasized the need for furthering education and training for the nurses (Parker & Hill, 2017). Advance nurse practitioners are nurses that are trained at a post-graduate/ masters’ level of training and who possess skills and knowledge capable of making patient diagnosis and treatment interventions (Parker & Hill, 2017). APNs are recognized and registered at the state level with different states having different scopes of practice for the nurse practitioners. Advance nurse practitioners may in some state have the freedom of independent practice while in other states the scope of practice is limited, and they practice under a physician.

The Certified nurse anesthetist work in collaboration with other health care providers to ensure safe administration of anesthesia (epidural, spinal, or nerve blocks). Among their key roles include pain management, managing patient recovery from anesthesia and patient stabilization. The services of the certified nurse anesthetists work in surgery, diagnostics and in therapeutic patient procedures. Clinical nurse specialists have different roles depending on their areas of specialization. The clinical nurse specialist can specialize in areas such as intensive care, emergency care among others or per populations such as pediatrics, geriatrics or women health, specific diseases, health problems or care-type such as psychiatric, rehabilitative among others. Ethical behavior for nurse practitioners is regulated by the ethical principles of nursing. Nurse practitioners are expected to exhibit fidelity in practice through ensuring that they are honest and keep commitments ensuring safe patient care practice.

The ethical principle of fidelity guides nurse practitioners to adhere to their professional standards in ensuring safe patient care is established and maintained (Fowler, 2017). Nurse practitioners as per the ethical principle of fidelity ought to adhere to their scope of practice and practice within the professional standards of care. Nurse practitioners should adhere and exhibit behavior that ensures that patient interventions should be aimed at ensuring positive patient outcomes as per the ethical principle of beneficence, and that patient care ought to be safe and should not expose the patient to any sort of harm (nonmaleficence) (Alexander, 2015). The important reason for ensuring that my skills and competencies such as interpersonal and other professional skills are well tuned is that, the transition into nursing practitioner’s role requires the new nurse practitioner to practice in an environment that borders between, the traditional nursing and medical practice and culture where the roles of the nurse practitioner are often not well defined or accepted (MacLellan, Levett-Jones & Higgins, 2015).

Ensuring competencies will be a critical enabler for me to integrate and establish myself within my scope of practice. My key interest in the nursing practice field is majorly family health and research. I will immediately after graduation work under the guidance of an experienced nurse practitioner who will provide me with guidance and directions to ease my transition to practice. My choice to work under a nurse practitioner is that I feel working in a similar profession will offer me the actual experience as well as professional exposure better compared to working under a physician. doi: 10. 1097/nan. 0000000000000107 Barnes, H. Nurse Practitioner Role Transition: A Concept Analysis.  Nursing Forum, 50(3), 137-146. Nurse practitioner role transition: A concept analysis.  Journal of The American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 27(7), 389-397.