Here are the Challenges that Nurse Practitioners are Facing Today

There has been a huge need for people who want to be a Nurse Practitioner, and this need has been going on for a very long time. Practitioners are just nurses who have a graduate level education that has further trained them to be able to do advanced nursing tasks. By graduate level education I mean that they have achieved either a Masters or Doctoral degree in nursing. Students must enter a NP program that teaches them how to do advanced tasks. These program teach aspiring students how to do things they couldn't do when they were a registered nurse.

Practitioners are being challenged from all angles everyday as they work. Its all about trying to balance out with practitioners working with actual professionals who work with medicine like MDs and the other health care workers such as RNs, CNAs or physician assistants. Practitioners who are in poor rural areas are definitely needed because of the fact that there is a huge lack of doctors around. Because of this practitioners are depended on to do the tasks of a MD. They've practically been trained to be able to most of the tasks of a doctor and it costs significantly less to staff a nurse practitioner.

Practitioners who are in these poor communities do tasks that are similar to a doctor like giving patient advice and consultations, identifying and diagnosing patient illnesses and diseases, they are able to write prescriptions for patients, and they are relied upon to order and interpret laboratory tests. Practitioners can even perform or participate in certain surgeries such as biopsies and sutures. The most difficult thing facing practitioners are making a clear and distinctive representation of the differences between them and all the people they work alongside of.

The biggest problems that NPs have to deal with is the state regulations they have to work within their scope of practice. Some practitioners are allowed to have a private practice in some states whereas in others they can't have a practice independently. Some states require practitioners to be supervised by a physician and some don't, this is concerning overseeing NPs and the treatments they decide to give patients. Back in the 1960s, practitioners weren't even allowed to practice independently because physicians didn't think they should be able to work without supervision.

Nowadays, the Nurse Practitioner is respected and seen as a important asset to the health care industry. Its all about accepting that practitioners may not have been as trained as extensively as doctors, but they are still trained enough to perform the tasks that a doctor can. They are competent and educated workers.

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