Nursing in 2021

Nursing Future in 2021 Nursing has not changed greatly for decades. Nurses now have more freedom than they did two decades ago, but nurses still provide the same care they have for the past century. This has been changing with the advent of nursing master's programs that are allowing registered nurses the opportunity to become more specialized in fields of their choice. A nurse can choose from many different nurse practitioner specialties to become more engaged in their field.

Nurse practitioner programs allow nurses to be more involved in decisions that are made regarding patient care, so that the nurse becomes more responsible. The position of neonatal nurse practitioner is explained more fully in the following essay. Neonatal care refers to the hospital department that takes care of an infant at the earliest stages of life. A neonatal nurse practitioner "frequently reports directly to a neonatologist or other specialists who may be handling the care of very ill infants" (Ellis-Christensen, 2011).

This practitioner will have to work in a large hospital environment that has a neonatal department, and he or she will often direct emergency care. The primary role of a neonatal nurse practitioner is to give a care team something it does not have when only the traditional roles of a care team are in place. When a care team is made up of just a doctor (or doctors) and nurses, experience and decision making ability are lost.

A nurse practitioner has more ability to make decisions than a registered nurse and that person also has a different type of education than a doctor. The value of the position is that the neonatal nurse practitioner has the experience and education to make complex decisions based on a nursing care model rather than a physicians clinical model. Generally, the nurse practitioner is more available than a doctor, so when immediate decisions are needed the practitioner can make them.

Of course, the level of care provided by a neonatal nurse practitioner varies from hospital to hospital, but these individuals are receiving more recognition as the field progresses. The education required begins when the registered nurse chooses an area of the hospital in which they want to work. Most neonatal nursing practitioner programs require that the nurse entering the program has a minimum (usually two to three years) experience in a neonatal setting prior to beginning the program.

Program length and requirements vary, but the candidate can expect two to three years of training after which the nurse may have to pass nurse practitioner boards. As with any other nursing field, the neonatal nurse practitioner will be required to maintain a certain number of continuing education hours every year to maintain a license. The reason for this is that the field changes.