Barriers of Advanced Nursing Practice
Barriers of Advanced Nursing Practice
Barriers of Advanced Nursing Practice
Healthcare reform has been evolving over the years, and nurse practitioners (NP) have a critical role in improving patient outcomes. These nurses are the change advocates and are responsible for caring for diverse populations with complex health issues and healthcare systems. Therefore, these nurses need to practice to the fullest of their education and knowledge to attain positive patient outcomes. However, barriers to their advanced practice exist like the state of practice and licensure, physician-related issues, and payer policies.
State licensing bodies control nursing in the academic and training fields. These laws are different from one state to another though they have the similar objective of maintaining full authority in nursing practice. According to Hamric et al. (2013), various practices of full authority mandate the nurse to undertake different major patient care treatment and practice care. However, only a fraction of the healthcare sector has adopted these laws. The nonconforming states have reduced these laws or restricted nurses from practicing them in various jurisdictions and facilities. These overly restrictive policies and practices hinder nurses with equivalent national certification and educational preparation to practice their mandate after relocation to other states. The relevant regulatory bodies must provide clear guidelines on the nurse practitioners to provide these services and hold meaningful conversations on the strategies solving the growing need for primary healthcare providers in all the states. Addressing these issues is critical because it eliminates the disparities in healthcare.
Physician-related issues emerge when physician professional bodies like the American Medical Association support the notion that physicians undergo longer and thorough training sessions than NPs thus cannot provide safe and quality services. Some physicians undermine the qualifications of NPs and transmit these ideas to their patients and the public, who end up rejecting the services of these nurses. Therefore, most nurses view NPs as lowly qualified and incapable of meeting their needs and care strategies. Additionally, some physicians and other healthcare personnel have insufficient information on the knowledge, skills, and scope of practice of NPs, thus undermining them. To solve this problem, physicians and nurse practitioners must collaborate to achieve the best nursing practices and share knowledge and skills (Anderson, 2018). The collaboration will clear issues on the scope of practice and restore the nurses’ confidence and the patients to their health providers.
Payer policies significantly impact the NPs’ ability to practice to the maximum of their training and licensure. Many organizations link these policies to state licensing and regulatory boards. Therefore, some restrictive scope-of-practice policies limit the NP’s ability to perform their duties independently. Anderson (2018) posits that these laws force the nurses to practice as professionals of physician practice. Additionally, these laws differ and make the nurse incapable of overseeing the primary healthcare sector in any facility. Therefore, they mandate other professionals like physicians to lead these facilities and care for patients. These policies also make the accreditors rigid in credentialing the NPs for the services that they disseminate. Such actions demotivate them and make it hard to advance their studies and practice. Consequently, these agencies must introduce and incorporate interprofessional education to enhance learning and interaction among health professionals to combat these problems. Such educational policies advance their knowledge and create awareness in the credentialing agencies on the significance of upgrading them.
The expanded healthcare coverage policies enacted by the ACA affect healthcare professionals as their demand increases in the sector. Furthermore, these strategies motivate the professionals to coincide with the demands of a diverse patient population in an evolving healthcare force. Training and education prepare its nurses for these challenges and changes. Education and training are critical for enabling them to reclaim their role as primary healthcare providers despite the changes in the population profile.
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