Role of Nurse practitioner

MAIN BODY

A nurse practitioner is defined as healthcare professional who provide a number of primary, acute and special care services to patients. Acute care nurse practitioners offer services in hospitals and other healthcare centres when patients get injured or diagnosed with diseases. They provide primary care to patient when they get admit in hospital, till their discharge. They are also reliable to perform procedures like debriding wounds, putting casts on injuries and intubation. Nurses practitioners are also specialised in various areas like paediatric, oncology, psychiatry and gerontology (Lowe, Plummer & Boyd, 2018). In order to get registered, all nurse practitioners need to persuade  bachelor of science in nursing. Nurses require to go thorough a specific examination to collect their nursing certificates from nursing board. Nurse practitioners work with physicians so they can appropriate medications as per patient's medical condition. Nurse practitioner emphasize on improving patient health rather than providing treatment. Common responsibilities of a nurse practitioner includes ordering diagnostic tests such as lab work and x-rays, designing treatment plans, diagnosing medical conditions, injuries, and acute illness, teaching patients about medical conditions and treatments, writing prescriptions for medications, performing necessary medical treatments and gathering and recording patient medical histories. Nurses offer various healthcare services to all age groups of patients. Adult nurse practitioners are reliable to provide healthcare services to adult age group (Kerr & Macaskill, 2020). These care services include prescription, exams, treatments and education. Paediatric nurse practitioners serve care facilities to new born babies and teenagers. Older adults are treated by geriatric nurse practitioners as they are reliable to serve in residential care homes for diabetic patients and provide other essential health care services to older population. Women nurse practitioners focus on improving women's health in order to make them live a healthy life. Women nursing practitioners offer gynaecological and  reproductive care facilities to women. Neonatal nurse practitioners are specialised nurses who provide primary care to new born babies as they need extra support and care. Usually, they share information to new parents to guide them to take care of their newborns. In neonatal intensive care units, nurses work in delivery and labour units for delivery of a healthy newborn. Acute nurse practitioners provide emergency care facilities with the aim to treat severe illness and injuries  (Kant and et. al., 2018). Occupational health nurse practitioners provides workers education and treat workplace injuries.

Healthcare professionals are facing difficulties with reaching increasing demand of care services of people as world is having shortage of physicians (O'Connor, Palfreyman& Borghmans, 2018). Administrators and policy makers are identifying potential solution in order to resolve arising health issues. Healthcare setting utilises variable capacities of nurse practitioners so they can offer quality of care to vulnerable people. Sometimes, nurse practitioners offers primary care to patient rather than providing episodic care. A survey conducted with 807 nurse participants in order to evaluate their rile in delivery of primary care. The main aim of this survey was to promote working environment of nurse practitioners to provide quality services to patients. Increasing shortage of health care professionals is responsible for imbalance in supply of primary care providers and demand for quality of care. In Australia, nurse practitioners always serve primary care to the patients to meet with their health requirements. Nurse practitioners are provided appropriate training to work independently and provide quality care service to patients. Evidences found that there are several barriers on role of nursing practitioners in patient's access to care and delivery of care. Isolated investigations emphasize on barriers found on state level but not examining characteristic of health care settings hiring nurse practitioners. There are some organisational level interventions to utilise capacity of nurse practitioners to deliver primary care to patients (Jackson  & Lopez, 2018).

The research paper finds evidences to evaluate the significance of role of nurse practitioners in healthcare settings. The healthcare settings in Australia are focusing on delivering appropriate and safe healthcare to patients. Local and systematic barriers are rectified within private and public sector (Owens,  2019). Nurse practitioners do not have access to MBS as other medical colleagues have. Nurse practitioners so not have direct economic value for the provision of provided services when they compared to their medical colleagues working in public sector for public welfare. A position paper “The economic value and potential of Nurse Practitioners in Australia” was published by Australian college of nurse practitioners which demonstrate the feasibility of nurse practitioners and implementation of their role to provide primary care services. Establishment of oriental changes can be considered as integral part of profession of nursing and the outcomes signifies the capacity of the professional to bring effective substantial changes with the intension to provide safe and appropriate healthcare with the identification of existential gaps in the provision of care (Hudspeth & Klein, 2019).

Role of nurse practitioners refers to analysing patients, prescribing medications, providing treatments and evaluate their health outcomes. There are some special skills required to nurse practitioners to deliver primary care for patient. These skills includes strong communication skills, critical thinking, leadership skills, patient assessment, wound care, patient nutrition skills, medication administration and exhibit patient under stress.  A good nurse practitioner need to share information effectively while delivering primary care too patients. It is very important develop strategies to make ways to cross language hurdles and share accurate medical informations. Nurse practitioners collaborate with physicians and build a multidisciplinary team to provide primary care, leadership skills are required to guide the nursing team in a direction to achieve a common goal. A good team leaders always offer welfare for all team members as well as patients. Nurse practitioners are required to think uniquely because every individual patient and health condition can be different (Hoyt, Evans, Wilbeck, J., Ramirez, E., Agan, D., Tyler & Schumann, 2018). They make decisions to recommend best treatment and care plan for patient to get them quick recovery. It is mandatory to keep calm while difficult circumstances in order to improve quality of care services. Nurse practitioners always prepare to deal with difficult circumstances as they stay calm in stressful medical condition of patients. Nurse practitioners are reliable to monitor patient's health condition. It has been observed that practitioners need to know about the patient's response to drugs and surgeries. Practitioners consult to senior nurses to \get appropriate advise to treat patients. Nurse practitioners are responsible to feed patients as per their diet chart. Some patients can not feed independently and hence require assistance of a nurse and their knowledge about nutrition (Hagan, J., & Curtis Sr, 2018)(Fealy and et. al., 2018). Nurse practitioners also administer medications to patient as per their prescribed drugs. Nurse apply antiseptics and bandages to heal the wound and minimises the chances bacterial growth. Nurse practitioner employ skills for risk prevention to ensure patient's safety. Nurse practitioners maintain cleanliness and hygiene while delivering primary care to patients. They are reliable to offer a sanitary environment to patient which minimises the chances of re-hospitalisation (Coppa, Schneidereith & Farina, 2019).  

Nurse practitioner are reliable to assist other healthcare professionals for delivery of quality care in order to better meet with patient's requirements. The main aim of this study was to survey the role of nursing practitioners in Australia. It is very important to have strategic planning and organisational structures to ensure sustainability of the roles. Strategical planning are required for their continuos development. There is a set of questionaries developed after a literature review, in order to gather relevant information about the role of nursing practitioners. It has been observed that nurse practitioners can make required changes in order to improve the delivery of chronic and acute care  to residential settings and community. The researches found key benefits of hiring nursing practitioners in healthcare settings (Barratt & Thomas, 2019). Evidences show that funding and medical support are required to establish role of nurse practitioners. Funding is required to get the cess of medical resources for nurse practitioners so they can provide primary care to patients. It is vital to clear the roles and responsibilities of nurse practitioners to improve the quality of delivery of services and patient's health outcomes. Study shows that nurse practitioners also observed lack of understanding among them which is leading poor patient outcome. Lack of transparency is creating misunderstanding among nurse practitioners which enhances chance of medical errors and leads to poor patient outcome (Thompson, 2019). It has been concluded that access to prescribing rights is vital for the development of role of a nurse practitioner. Lack of access create obstacles to musing practices in Australia. Funding play a pivotal role to encourage nurse practitioners for the delivery of primary care and support to patients. MBS provides funds to private settings to enable fee for nursing practitioner for the care of delivery they offer to patients (Almutairi and et. al., 2020).

There are number of key benefits of working as a nurse practitioners but they also face many challenges during their practice. These challenges include emotional work, varying working hours, working with diverse people, power imbalance and hire-achy, not being able to help everyone, language barriers, geographical barriers and restricted practice settings. Sometimes, nurse practitioners are unable to provide care facilities to patients, living in remote areas. Geographical barriers come in way of delivery of care to the patients. Nurse practitioners require to collaborate with local authorities to provide care to Torres islander and aboriginal people. In Australia, nurse practitioners are unapproachable for  Torres islander and aboriginal people due to language barriers. Nurse practitioners require to develop their communication skills and adopt language to build strong relationship with patients. Different laws and legislation across the world also hinders the potential of a nurse practitioner to serve primary care to patients. Laws and regulation restrict nurse practitioners and hence they do not prove comprehensive and safe care to patients.   

As per the perspective Andrew et. al., Australia moved for a national registration procedure to all nursing practitioners under the auspices of the  (AHPRA) Australian health practitioner regulation agency and surrounding the various regulatory board, involving the NMBA that is nursing and midwifery board of Australia. The nursing and midwifery board of Australia (NMBA) commissioned the second types of drafting of the advanced criteria and standards to practice to the NP ( nurse practitioner) in 2012, with the objective of reviewing the standards for reflecting actual p[practice and contemporary. In Australia, Nursing practitioner is a regulated body needing endorsement by the nursing and midwifery board of Australia. In Australia, applicants who have successfully completed a required and approved master's education program of study in nursing. The applicant of nursing practitioner also required document of 5000 hours of advanced practice are capable or eligible for applying to the agreement as nursing practitioners. The staffs of the  Nursing and midwifery board of Australia evaluates the applications against the  nursing practitioner standards of Australia to practice for determining the capability or eligibility to nursing practitioner affirmation. You can get the answer: Role of Nurse practitioner

(Wood, 2020). In Australia, the first national Competency criteria to the nursing practice standards was published in year 2004. In Australia, one set of the national practice standards are utilised to a range of the educational, regulatory monitoring purposes and employment, population concentration, irrespective of a speciality of nursing practitioner, and geographical locale. Apart from this, the standards provide support to the nursing practitioners in validating and defining their individual scope of practice. Criteria also enable evaluation of individual nursing practitioner performance and also inform another experts ans health service user about scope and capabilities   of practice. The nursing practitioner standards in the Australia mean that the review need a generic procedure for content rather than a population concentration or practice speciality. In the nursing applicant registration criteria consist three phase of development. These development phase are given below:

• Phase 1: literature review, consultation and synthesis ( field experience and political knowledge)
• phase 2: Gap evaluation and public consultation ( political knowledge and field experiences)
• phase 3: validation of the revised criteria and standards ( research based knowledge).

In the Australian nursing practice, there are seven nursing standards in the nursing practitioner. These seven standards are following, which are given below:

• Applicant have ability to think critically and analyses nursing practices.
• They have ability to engages in the professional and therapeutic relationship.
• They are able to maintain their capability to practice.

Also Read: COMMUNITY NURSING

CONCLUSION 

From the above report, it has been summarised that nurse practitioners play a pivotal role in delivery of primary care services to patients. The evidences shows that  Nurses play a significant role in patient selection, suitable assessment for identification of arising issues, administration of appropriate medication/therapies or devices to patients, educating patient for utilisation of medicines, evaluation of patient's outcomes. In Australia, nurse practitioners found potential barriers in delivery of care to aboriginal people which includes  language barrier, geographical barrier, emotional barriers and workload. Governmental bodies of Australia set some standards to get registered as a nurses practitioner. This report summarised all the standards set by the  Australian Health Care Practitioner Regulation Agency.

Read Also: 

NUR 501 Nursing Theories and Models

APN105 Applying nursing practice

UPTO51%

Avail The Benefit Today!

To View this & another 50000+ free

Enter Email

Submit