Nurse Practitioners and Counseling

Nurse Practitioners Providing the Full Spectrum of Health Care Services As the National Organizatoin of Nurse Practitioner Faculty (NONPF, 2013) competencies indicate, full spectrum of health care services should include health promotion, disease prevention, health protection, anticipatory guidance, counseling, disease management, palliative care and end of life care. This is a standard that is vital to primary care nursing because patients expect and have a need to obtain each of these services, as they are all part of quality care.

As the study by Flanagan-Kaminsky (2013) points out, end of life care is something that more and more patients in the Veterans Affairs Hospice program and looking to receive (p. 69). This is just one example of the type of quality care that patients and their families expect from nurse practitioners and health care providers.

Counseling is another aspect of this type of care and is included in the study as an element of quality care that patients and their families seek so as to know how to deal with the next step in their journeys. Manheim, Haverhals, Jones and Levy (2016) support the finding of Flanagan-Kaminsky (2013) with their study on the end-of-life process and what families and patients require.

While this is only one aspect of the NONPF (2013) competency, it nonetheless underscores the value of the competency and why nurse practitioners must be able to provide these services to patients. Patient care is not just about administering a diagnosis or conducting a screening. There is an entire process of health provision that touches upon every aspect of the patient's life -- and other stakeholders' lives too. Thus, patients' families should be included in guidance discussions, counseling programs, end-of-life consultations, disease prevention procedures and more.

Matthews (2014) likewise points out the need that families and patients have to receive anticipatory guidance, palliative care and other forms of care described above. Patients with military backgrounds are especially vulnerable to health issues and in VA facilities it is increasingly important that nurse practitioners be able to offer the services that are needed. Thus, as Matthews (2014) notes, it is imperative that nurse practitioners develop this core competency as part of their training so that they are able to meet the needs of patients and their families.

As these studies indicated, the competency outlined for the nurse practitioner by the NONPF regarding full spectrum health care services is a vital standard for primary care nursing because patients and families require more than just basic services in today's health care industry. Quality of service is the ultimate goal for health care providers and their patients and families, and quality of service is defined by the extent to which providers go to assist patients and their families with all aspects of health issues that they are facing.

These aspects include the need for counseling, for educational material on health promotion, for guidelines on disease prevention, for concepts of health protection (such as falls prevention for elderly persons, and the risks of sharing needles for drug users). Nurse practitioners should be able to supply anticipatory guidance, counseling, disease management, palliative care and end of life care to patients, who themselves are likely to come from a.