Define Advance Practice Nursing in the state of California.
Advance practice nursing (APN) refers to the level of nursing that utilize high comprehensive skills, knowledge and experience in offering nursing care, United States. (2007). APN refer to registered nurses who gain specialized skills in offering expert nursing care who have master’s degrees in nursing. Advanced practice nurses include; certified nurse mid-wives, nurse anesthetists, clinical nurse specialists, and nurse practitioners. Their mandate is to offer advanced or expert nursing services. These specialized or advanced nurses are registered and certified to practice by the California State Board of Registered Nursing. They provide expert services that include; consultations, direct patient care, emergency responses and operations services as (Courtenay, 2000) illustrates.
California Scope of Practice for Nurse Practitioner
The California scope of nursing practitioner states that, patient care whether direct or indirect should ensure four basic factors when handling a patient. This four include safety of a patient while under the care of the nurses, the protection of a patient from any harm that might, whether directly or indirectly, come their way. The patient’s personal hygiene is also stated as being of utter most importance and finally a patient is meant to feel and become comfortable while in the care of the nurses. Nurses are also in charge of coming up with restorative measures as well as disease prevention performance.
Describe the role of the Advanced Practice Nurse, Family Nurse Practitioner.
Having understood what advanced practice nursing is, it is important to analyze the roles of advanced practice nurses in the medicine field. From the definition, it was evident that in advanced practice nursing, the nurses here concerned with various expert services that they render to patients. According to Kenney (1999), advanced practice nursing is a diverse field, which offers diverse services depending on prevailing medical conditions at hand. Since they offer expert services, this means that one of their major roles is to utilize their diagnostic reasoning to help resolve ailments from patients. Therefore, one of the major roles is to invoke their reasoning to diagnose illnesses and formulate treatment methodologies for respective patients. Expert jobs require high reasoning capabilities and it is required in advanced nursing where high skills and mastery are required as slight mistakes would be detrimental and fatal on patients (Courtenay, 2000).
Advanced nursing also involve the provision of preventive care, treatment and diseases management. The advanced nurses dedicate their practice to formulating means of preventing illnesses and treatment. The nurses use their comprehensive skills, knowledge, and experience in offering nursing care; hence, they dedicate their knowledge and experience to prevention and treatment of diseases in their areas of expertise. This help in disease management as control, prevention, and treatment are well enhanced through the advanced practice nursing. The nurses further help in the management of acute and chronic diseases by employing their advanced masterly in clinical skills. These clinical skills are achieved through practice, experience, and research, United States (2007). The nurse experts are involved in research probing cure, the control, and prevention of illnesses. These researches improve disease management and integration of clinical education as their research outcomes are used to teach other advanced practice nurses. Finally, advanced practice nurses offer advanced therapeutic disease interventions which are boosted by their experience, clinical expertise and research carried out.
Family nurse practitioners (FNP) are nurses trained through advanced education and clinical trainings to provide a wide range of preventive and acute health care services to individuals at different ages. They are trained like the advanced practice nurses, but the family nurse practitioners offer their services to individuals at the family level. Family nurse practitioners provide regular and basic services unlike the advanced nurses who offer expert services, Kenney (1999). Some of the roles of the family nurse practioner are discussed below. They perform physical examinations and hence diagnose and treat common illnesses that do not require expertise. They interpret all medical results and can prescribe medications as well as managing therapies. They also offer counseling services and health education that improve health maintenance and prevention of diseases. They perform minor surgeries and procedures as well as engaging in health researches to control and manage health standards in individuals they attend to. However, when faced with challenges beyond their scope they forward them to the relevant medics for further attention and treatment.
Describe you’re ultimate career goals as it pertains to the scope of practice of a nurse practitioner.
The ultimate career goals of a nurse practitioner should be in line with the various roles the practitioner play in the health sector administration and management, Kenney, J. W. (1999). In this case, the goals have to rhyme with the roles as discussed above in this paper. The career goals are discussed below. One, carrying out extensive research on various illnesses and challenges in the health sector to help come up with recommendations that would prevent, control or mitigate the challenges. To serve as a good career developer and self-development research has to be done to help resolve prevailing challenges. Research is crucial in formulating treatment and preventive measures to specific illnesses. As a practitioner carrying out research on illness or problems that the nursing profession or medicine world is faced to is critical. This is because this researches my go on to help the future generation of practitioners. In addition, being a practitioner means dedicating or devoting once life to the profession through coming up with ways on how to cub the problems in the profession
Second, through the researches done, the findings and recommendations to certain aspects of health should be used to develop the clinical education system. These results could be used to contribute to the learning of other experts. Critical education systems can be formed by observing past mistakes done while at the same time coming up with solutions that meet the problem. Through this, researches on illness or the practice can be able to influence future learning nurses. In addition, one will be able to set perspectives into the learning of the profession.
The third factor is offering expert and quality services to the patients. This is made possible through utilization of diagnostic reasoning to resolve health problems that are the pillar towards offering expert consultation services. Management of acute and chronic diseases would be made possible through utilization of diagnostic reasoning where advanced therapeutic interventions are defined and used to curb chronic diseases. Use of expert knowledge and diagnostic reasoning would a career goal for a nurse practitioner that would enable control, prevent, mitigate and cure all forms of illnesses.
References
United States. (2007). Advanced practice nursing. Washington, D.C.: Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
Courtenay, M. (2000). Advanced nursing skills: Principles and practice. London: Greenwich Medical Media.
Kenney, J. W. (1999). Philosophical and theoretical perspectives for advanced nursing practice. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett.
