Advanced Practice Nurse Roles, Challenges, and Definition
This paper examines the essential roles of Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs), analyzing the functions of educator, researcher, expert, consultant, leader, and change agent within the nursing profession. It argues that the expert role is the most critical, as it encompasses the direct, day-to-day delivery of evidence-based clinical care. The paper also addresses challenges APNs face in professional relationships, particularly with physicians, and proposes open communication as a key strategy for navigating those tensions. A concluding section offers the author's own definition of advanced nursing practice, emphasizing comprehensive knowledge, graduate preparation, and the synthesis and development of nursing theory and research.
- APN as Educator and Researcher: APNs educate nurses and advance research-based practice
- APN as Expert and Consultant: APNs deliver expert care and consult internally and externally
- APN as Leader and Change Agent: APNs lead healthcare and implement evidence-based change
- The Most Important APN Role: Expert role argued as most essential to nursing
- Challenges in Professional Relationships: Gender, physician relations, and identity challenges for APNs
- Defining Advanced Nursing Practice: Personal definition emphasizing knowledge synthesis and specialization
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What makes this paper effective
- Systematically addresses each APN role with a clear functional description, making it easy for readers to compare and contrast responsibilities.
- Grounds claims in cited literature (Jansen & Zwygart-Stauffacher, Fitzgerald et al., Leske), lending academic credibility to the role analyses.
- Moves fluidly from analytical description to personal reflection, particularly in the sections on professional relationship challenges and the author's own definition of advanced nursing practice.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively combines literature synthesis with personal position-taking. After summarizing research on each APN role, the author selects and defends a single role as most important, demonstrating the ability to formulate and justify an argument rather than merely cataloguing information.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into three main question-response blocks. The first block defines and evaluates six APN roles, concluding with a defended position on the most important one. The second block addresses professional relationship challenges using both scholarly sources and anticipated personal experience. The third block offers a personal definition of advanced nursing practice, synthesizing the paper's themes into a holistic conceptual statement.
APN as Educator and Researcher
APNs play the role of educators in the nursing practice. Held to high professional standards, they must demonstrate competencies in education, research, and clinical skills. In addition, they promote quality and provide leadership within their field of expertise (Jansen & Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010). Advanced Practice Nurses should model a passion for lifelong learning and be strategically involved in professional nursing organizations in order to influence public policy and institute positive change in the nursing profession. It is imperative to recognize that without nurses taking up the educator role, advanced specialties could not exist. APNs educate aspiring nurses to meet the growing demand in the healthcare system (Jansen & Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2010).
The role of the APN in nursing research continues to grow and offers several opportunities to constructively affect patient outcomes. In particular, there are several research-related roles that the APN can cultivate, including coordinating, synthesizing, piloting, consulting, and contributing to nursing research. Research-based practice, which is the vital objective of all research activities, can be promoted when research is made a priority among the numerous responsibilities of the APN (Leske, 2007).
References
Carter, N., Martin-Misener, R., Kilpatrick, K., Kaasalainen, S., Donald, F., Bryant-Lukosius, D., Harbman, P., Bourgeault, I., & DiCenso, A. (2010). The role of nursing leadership in integrating clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners in healthcare delivery in Canada. Nursing Leadership, 23(Special Issue), 167–185.
Elser, A., McClanahan, M., & Green, T. J. (1996). Advanced practice nurses: Change agents for clinical practice. The Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing, 10(1), 72–78.
Fitzgerald, C., Kantrowitz-Gordon, I., Katz, J., & Hirsch, A. (2011). Advanced practice nursing education: Challenges and strategies. Nursing Research and Practice, 2012.
Jansen, M., & Zwygart-Stauffacher, M. (2010). Advanced practice nursing: Core concepts for professional role development. Springer Publishing Company.
Leske, J. S. (2007). Roles for the advanced practice nurse in nursing research. Perioperative Nursing Clinics, 2(1), 37–45.
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