Looking Into Advanced Nursing Practice Roles

Advanced Nursing Practice Roles

Analyze the essential roles of the APN including educator, researcher, expert, consultant, leader, and change agent. Explain the functions of each role. Which role do you see as the most important and why?

Educator

APNs play the role of educators. Being educators in the nursing practice, they are held to high standards professionally and ought to satisfy these qualifications. As educators, they show their competencies in education, research and clinical skills. In addition, they promote quality and provide leadership within their field of expertise (Jansen and Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010). Advanced Practice Nurses should model fervor for enduring learning, in addition to being tactically involved in professional nursing establishments to influence public policy and institute positive change in the nursing practice. It is imperative that devoid of the nurses taking up the role as educators, there would be no existence of advanced specialties. APNs educate the aspiring nurses so as to satisfy the demand in the healthcare system (Jansen and Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010).

ii. Researcher The role of the advanced practice nurse (APN) in nursing research goes on to increase and offer several prospects to constructively affect patient outcomes. In particular, there are several roles that the APN can cultivate to nurture nursing research. These roles take account of coordinating, combining, piloting, consulting, and constraining to research in nursing. Research-based practice, which is the vital objective of all research activities, can be promoted if research is made a main concern within the numerous responsibilities of the APN (Leske, 2007).

iii. Expert There is also the expert role that is played by the APNs. In particular, this role encompasses the day-to-day expertise undertaken by the advanced practice nurses. This encompasses being skillful, adept, and proficient in their practical functionalities of rendering effective evidence-based healthcare to patients who are in need of their expertise (Jansen and Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010).

iv. Consultant The consultation role of the APN takes into account the influence and impact of clinical specialists on patient outcomes. In particular, an APN might be an internal consultant within the organization or an external one, outside the organization. In general, an internal consultant undertakes the role of managing, continuing issues that have a high occurrence or necessitate longstanding management (Jansen and Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010). The benefit of APNs as internal consultants is that they are less likely to be perceived by personnel as an agent of administration and they are well knowledgeable with issues within the system. More so, they are effective in consulting with clients, owing to their availability and continuation. On the other hand, as external consultants, APNs are more often than not considered to have more administrative sanction, additional knowledge, easier accessibility to sources of information and minimal predetermined notions regarding a situation. More so, they can provide impetus for change (Jansen and Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010).

v. Leader

APNs also play the role of leaders in the nursing practice. As nursing leaders, they play a significant role in shaping the profession as a whole to become all the more responsive to the changing healthcare. Being effective leaders, APNs act as collaborators, advocates for quality care, risk takers, communicators and visionaries. However, they do face plenty of challenges in this epoch, owing to intricate issues, for instance, insufficient funding, shortages in HR, and the mounting need for healthcare services for the aging population (Carter et al., 2015). In addition, as leaders, the APNs facilitate the incorporation of aspiring APNs and new research and technology into the healthcare systems (Carter et al., 2015).

vi. Change Agent

One of the intrinsic roles of the APN is that of acting as a change agent. In essence, this encompasses being in collaboration and also having different consultations with other providers of health care. The APN can offer this service by means of persistent and continual education, research, organizational leadership as well as personal development. Serving as a change agent gives the APN the role of promoting as well as the provision of outstanding evidence-based care. The utilization of research is largely required to fashion, shape and form the foundation of nursing practice. This is precisely the role played by APNs. Being change agents, the advanced practice nurses implement the cutting-edge research, and employ knowledge of change to provide the best evidence-based healthcare in practice (Elser et al., 1996).

The aforementioned roles all play a significant part in the nursing practice as a whole. However, taking this into account, in overall, I consider the expert role to be the most important role. This is because this role in particular encompasses all the day-to-day activities that a nurse is expected to do. These are vital activities, which encompass rendering health care and clinical care to patients who are desperately in need of it. The advancement of the nursing profession and advocating for change as times and technology progresses, is significant. However, I consider the saving of lives and the provision of care by meeting the needs of individuals, households, communities and populations to be the most important role played by APNs.

Describe the challenges faced by APNs with regard to professional relationships. What types of challenges do you anticipate you will have in regards to professional relationships? How will you deal with these challenges?

There are several challenges that are faced by APNs with respect to professional relationships. One of the challenges that is mounting with regard to the preparation of advanced practice nurses, is significantly linked to the profession's relationship with the consumers and general public to whom service is rendered. In accordance to Fitzgerald et al. (2011), nursing carries on to be a profession that is subjugated by Caucasian women, a restriction that influences the profession's concession of interactions with other professions that are more male-dominated. On top of the protracted underrepresentation of men, varied populations, and rural occupants in the nursing labor force, advanced practice nursing goes on to struggle with an individuality crisis amongst the U.S. populace all in all, who are burdened with a knowledge shortfall as regards the abilities and capabilities of APRNs (Fitzgerald et al., 2011).

There is also another challenge faced by APNs in association with professional relationships and this is with regard to the interaction and relation with physicians in the healthcare setting. Traditionally, nurses function and operate at the direction of physicians, and social and work-related patterns that underpin this reliable relationship that is sluggish to change. Despite the fact that it is not apparent, the American Medical Association's determinations to go against the IOM's Future of Nursing Report will be completely efficacious; there is absence of support for full-scope APRN practice from this significant organization. This is unsatisfactory to those with visualization for the delivery of concerted care in a well-organized and operational inter-professional model (Fitzgerald et al., 2011). In addition, being able to negotiate a new standing in healthcare for nurses and more so advanced practice nurses will carry on to be convoluted and problematic, owing to gender politics in addition to power positioning (Fitzgerald et al., 2011).