¶ … Competency Although both nurse practitioners and nurse educators are advanced positions in the nursing field, these positions differ because they require different core competencies. This study compares the two professions. It also analyzes the similarities and differences in implementation of the competencies within the roles selected.

Nurse practitioners

Nurse practitioners are licensed nurses with graduate level training at the doctoral or master level. These nurses promote health, conduct comprehensive assessments, and prevention of injury or illness. Nurse practitioners were traditionally described as primary care givers. However, while currently working in various environments like tertiary care, defined examinations, and competencies have been created targeting nurse practitioners dealing with acute care cases. Nurse practitioners have been trained on multiple of specialties such as adult health, acute care, family health, pediatrics, gerontology, psychiatry, women's health, and Neonatology. Nursing practitioners have defined competencies in the specialty areas of psychiatric mental health and acute care (Wittmann-Price, 2013).

Nursing practitioners must undertake national certification exams in their areas of specialty after completing the graduate training. Certification is a nursing profession's mechanism used to attest to the practice entry knowledge of practitioners. Third party payers like the Medicaid Services and Center for Medicare and most standards of the nursing state boards used to protect the public from unsafe care providers. Certification exams are given by various bodies including the U.S. Academy of Nursing Practitioners, The Pediatric Board of Nursing Practitioners, The National Corporation of Certification and the Credentialing Center for American Nurses.

The state law prescribes the scope of practice and...

Reforms on the scope of practice depict the evolutionary dynamics of nursing practitioners' capabilities in delivering comprehensive and quality care in an effective and safe manner. Nurse practitioners operating outside the intended scope of practice tend to risk potential liability and legal sanctions. A significant difference exists between the regulation of primary and acute care nursing practitioner's assets. Recent surveys by the nurse practitioner state regulations on the laws legalizing the practice reveals that thirty states acknowledge care certification exams (Utley, 2011). However, most states are silent in differentiating between nursing practitioner and nursing educator in health care. There is a little similarity between the two occupations.
Nurse educators

Nurse educators assume three roles: teacher, scholar, and collaborator. As part of their teaching role, they act as leaders of the curriculum, evaluation, and instruction programs. Their role entails leading various educational settings: clinical teaching, classroom teaching, and virtual teaching, and seminar, application of knowledge in the work environment, supervision, and curriculum development. This function serves the core of education for additional roles performed by nurse educators. They gain competencies through experience and education applied during the learner engagement process. This helps to widen their vision of communities, patients and their profession. An essential competency of nursing administrators is their ability to model desired and appropriate behavior of the nursing practice and profession (Mirr & Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010).

Nursing educators serve as scholars of discovery, teaching, integration, and application. This is a popular concept reflecting the multifaceted importance and nature of the role of scholar…