A Nurse Practitioner's View

I recently wrote about my pursuit of the DNP and my rationale for it. As promised, here is the first brief installment of posts chronicling my final year of school (I actually have 10 months left now but who's counting!) Part of the final project is writing a systematic review. Since one of the principles of our program is evidence-based practice (EBP), our final project must be framed in the form of a PICO question. That is, Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. My group and I are still tweaking our question but it is centered on adults with type II diabetes. (Plus, I do need to maintain some level of suspense throughout these posts!) In order to gather the evidence, a comprehensive, systematic, and exhaustive search of the literature must be performed using key words and MeSH terms to narrow down the number of hits we get on our search. This is a critical part of any systematic review since the evidence gleaned will lay the groundwork for the review. We are searc...

I started to write this post and then said to myself, I'm not going there...its so passé. I saved it as a draft with little intention of completing it. Then I come across this " media kit " posted on the American Academy of Family Physician's (AAFP) website and just can't believe my eyes with their approach. They have set out to point out the obvious: NP education and training is different than that of physicians! Who knew?!?! I am so disappointed in the AAFP. Perhaps no other specialty works as closely together as NPs and family practice physicians. Up until now, I've generally come across very supportive family practice physicians of nurse practitioner practice. This is a slap in the face of sorts. And now the original post: Another day, another article about nurse practitioner's filling roles traditionally held by physicians, and another physician-centric theme by organized medicine. It's nice to read an article with some NP input and perspective....

How Hospitals Can Better Retain Their Nurses America is in the middle of a nursing shortage that is only expected to worsen as baby boomer nurses reach retirement age and a burgeoning population requires more healthcare. Here are just a few statistics that highlight the serious problems facing the healthcare industry: · More than 581,000 new nursing positions are expected to be created by 2018. This growth is much faster than any other industry, and there just aren’t enough nurses to fill the positions. · U.S. nursing shortage is projected to grow to between 260,000-500,000 by 2025. · Over the next 20 years, the average age of the RN will increase and the size of the workforce will plateau as large numbers of RNs retire. Because demand for RNs is expected to increase during this time, a large and prolonged shortage of nurses is expected to hit the US in the latter half of the next decade. · There are more than 100,000 vacant RN position...