Nursing
For each of the nine NONPF competencies, write one paragraph explaining how the program has prepared you to meet it (for a total of at least nine paragraphs). Then, propose and explain how you plan to engage in social change in your community as a nurse practitioner. Be specific and provide examples.
ANSWER
Nine NONPF Core Competencies
Nurse practitioners are an essential part of the healthcare team. They can provide primary care that may include health promotion and disease prevention, patient education, treatment, and acute and chronic illnesses management. Core competencies provide a common language that defines the general expectations of all nurse practitioners across all settings and specialties. The competencies serve as a practical guide for education programs, regulatory bodies, credentialing agencies, employers, and other stakeholders in assuring safe and effective care is provided by nurse practitioners. The nine core competencies by NONPF are based on leadership, scientific foundation, practice inquiry, information literacy, technology, policy, healthcare delivery system, ethics, and independent practice competencies (Thomas et al., 2017). The nine NONPF Core competencies apply to all nurse practitioners, regardless of setting or type of practice. They are the foundation for the guidance and regulation by which nurse practitioners practice and a framework from which to build an advanced practice nursing specialty.
Scientific Foundations: The Nurse practitioner program has ensured that the nurse practitioners have a comprehensive background and knowledge in natural and medical sciences. These include anatomy and physiology and their relationship to pathophysiology and clinical sciences such as pharmacology, concepts of infection control, physical assessment, and critical thinking skills (Thomas et al., 2017). The nurse practitioner requires foundational pharmacology and pathophysiology, including understanding clinical practice and knowledge to improve practice. Ideally, Nurse practitioner students receive an education based on the latest scientific evidence in clinical practice. All student nurse practitioners are expected to be familiar with new information to incorporate this knowledge into future patient care. The nurse practitioner program offers knowledge and understanding on evidence-based practice, clinical practice guidelines, treatment of vulnerable patients, and translation research. For nurse practitioners, the scientific foundation plays an essential role in evidence-based practices and increased quality of care.
Leadership: The leadership core competency was developed for all healthcare professionals, not only nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioner students have gained effective communication skills and how to work in a team environment. This core content area focuses on patient-centered healthcare and includes collaboration with other healthcare team members and fostering a unified workforce. The nurse practitioner student’s education includes leadership skills to facilitate collaboration with other members within the healthcare team (Schumacher and Risco, 2017). The leadership competency also focuses on applying interpersonal skills to empower patients to make informed decisions about their healthcare. Furthermore, nurse practitioner students are prepared to be leaders in the community by providing leadership through service, being engaged with local and national organizations that enhance the profession of nursing and health care.
Quality: The quality core content area revolves around providing high-quality health care services to students to demonstrate evidence-based decision-making. As a nurse practitioner student, it will be important to understand the concepts of quality care and performance improvement. The nurse practitioner student’s education includes understanding quality assurance frameworks established within healthcare systems, including managed care, administrative guidelines, accreditation requirements, outcome measurements, methods for improving efficiencies, and effectiveness measures. Implementing strategies will focus on patient-centered outcomes such as tolerance of disease or disruption of normal homeostatic processes; restoration or preservation of maximal function; relief of symptoms; restoration of pre-illness psychosocial functioning; in risk of illness (Schumacher and Risco, 2017). This will also enable the ability to create evidence-based plans.
Practice Inquiry: The nurse practitioner program helps prepare students for lifelong learning in nursing that is based on evidence-based practice. The learning experiences are designed to promote critical thinking skills, so that nurse practitioners can evaluate research reports and develop new knowledge. The nurse practitioner student’s education includes understanding clinical reasoning skills that will guide the use of research concepts, analytic techniques, and evaluative processes to address patient problems. Students are also aware of current information resources to make appropriate patient referrals based on age or population group. Furthermore, students are prepared to assess their practice patterns through evaluation strategies, including action planning, to implement change if needed.
Technology & Information Literacy: The nurse practitioner student’s education is based on technology and information literacy skills that focus on applying workplace computer applications and electronic health records. Furthermore, students are prepared to integrate information in the electronic health record with other patient information sources to make appropriate clinical decisions for patients. Nurse practitioner students are expected to have basic information technologies, including patient records systems, electronic medical records, computerized order entry systems, billing processes, and e-prescribing software (Thomas et al., 2017). Students will learn how these technologies can help them provide high-quality health care services by focusing on safe healthcare delivery within a team setting.
Policy: The nurse practitioner education provides knowledge and skills to understand the public policy issues that influence health care delivery for all populations across the continuum of care. The curriculum is based on ethical decision-making and collaboration with other healthcare team members when developing policies that affect patient safety, quality of care, and resource allocation. The nurse practitioner student’s education includes policy frameworks that focus on current healthcare legislation and regulatory issues that influence the organization’s scope of practice, emphasizing reimbursement policies. The nurse practitioner student can analyze how the organization adopts these formulas to provide equitable access for all patients. Furthermore, students are educated on ways of communicating these types of issues to organizational leadership.
Health Delivery System: Nurse practitioners participate within various agencies, including occupational health, home care, ambulatory clinics, or urgent care centers which provides students with an understanding of the various health delivery systems. These concepts focus on how healthcare services are provided in specific organizations based on population or workplace, such as occupational health. Furthermore, students are educated on ways to incorporate compliance issues within these settings that impact patient care. Nurse practitioner students learn about various types of health systems, including traditional fee-for-service, prepaid health plans, and capitation payments so they can provide high-quality services in many different settings. This prepares one to assess cost implications and identify sources of reimbursement for patient services rendered.
Ethics: Nurse practitioners must adhere to a code of ethics to provide high-quality health care. The curriculum teaches students how to incorporate ethical decision-making into their practice and provides a foundation for demonstrating professional behaviors when dealing with patients, families, other healthcare team members, and the community (Moore and Hawkins-Walsh, 2020). The nurse practitioner student’s education includes an understanding of various ethical theories, including those that guide decision-making to deal with complex issues regarding the delivery of patient care. These theories include professional and legal, and bioethical, such as confidentiality and informed consent principles that focus on providing good healthcare across all populations. Furthermore, students are prepared to advocate for quality and effective health care by ensuring patients receive optimal treatment and avoiding discrimination based on age, sex, race, or sexual orientation.
Independent Practice: The student gain the independent practice competency through lifelong learning in nursing based on evidence-based practice. The learning experiences are designed to promote critical thinking skills, so that nurse practitioners can evaluate research reports and develop new knowledge. The nurse practitioner student’s education includes the ability to provide safe and effective care in various settings such as acute care, long-term care, and public health. Furthermore, students are prepared to involve patients in their plan of care based on previous healthcare experiences while establishing priorities that impact patient safety. In addition, students can use clinical decision-making skills when practicing independently from a nurse preceptor for the first time.
Plan to Engage in Social Change
Nurse practitioners can promote social change through leadership and social responsibility. The plan to engage in social change will include active participation in healthcare legislation, educational strategies, collaborative strategies and policy based strategies. Advocacy and education will play a great role in engaging social change. Ideally, as a nursing profession, nurse practitioners can focus on the well-being of society through advocating social change. Active participation in healthcare legislation will boost social change and community advocacy. As a nurse practitioner, it is important to establish a link with legislative professionals to present significant public welfare issues. The political affiliations will enable the nurse practitioners to offer the government decision-makers meaningful and relevant information to advance public wellness and social change.
Nurse practitioners can facilitate social change through various interventions that extend beyond the realm of direct patient care. Understanding one’s community and taking a critical analysis approach to health care is the first step for nurse practitioners interested in social change (Carryer and Adams, 2017). Nurse practitioners can facilitate social change through various strategies aimed at improving health disparities among selected populations. Two key concepts concerning advocating for social changes include working collaboratively within interdisciplinary teams and conducting research on the needs of a given population.
Nurse practitioners can facilitate social change through public education on wellness. Public education creates to way dialogue which boosts community involvement in developing social change. Educational strategies can enable communities or individuals to access unbiased, factual information that can help empower communities and encourage critical thinking. For instance, social media campaigns educate people about different diseases or particular social issues using infographics and videos. Collaborative strategies such as nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals can work together to serve their communities. For instance, clinicians and community members work collaboratively on research projects or health care services for homeless people.
Policy-based strategies are important for nurse practitioners to take advantage of the power of being a licensed professional to change policies that affect patient access to quality health care (Carryer and Adams, 2017). For example, nurses participate in state legislative activities to increase funding for all areas of nursing or establish federal legislation that ensures equal access to quality health care. Nurse practitioners have a positive and profound impact on communities through patient advocacy and exceptional service delivery.
References
Carryer, J., & Adams, S. (2017). Nurse practitioners as a solution to transformative and sustainable health services in primary health care: A qualitative exploratory study. Collegian, 24(6), 525-531.
Moore, J., & Hawkins-Walsh, E. (2020). Evaluating nurse practitioner student competencies: Application of entrustable professional activities. Journal of Nursing Education, 59(12), 714-720.
Schumacher, G., & Risco, K. (2017). Competency-based nurse practitioner education: An overview for the preceptor. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 13(9), 596-602.
Thomas, A., Crabtree, M. K., Delaney, K., Dumas, M. A., Kleinpell, R., Marfell, J., & Wolf, A. (2017). Nurse practitioner core competencies content. The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties.
