Role of Family Nurse Practitioner

According to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Practitioners have been in practice for more than forty years and are continuing to rise. There are many different specialties that one may choose from, but I am going to focus on is the family Nurse Practitioner. I have three articles in which I am going to summarize in regards to the roles of a family nurse practitioner.
The first article is a case study done in British Columbia, the first Nurse Practitioner (NP) was hire and there needing to be some sort of regulation as far as to what the role of NP was to be. The method that was used to obtain the data was three different primary healthcare settings and then interviewed. In the study, participants were asked to role of the NP and the response of one responded that a “nurse practitioner is primary a nurse who has expanded training in diagnosis and treatment” (Sangster-Gormley et al, 2013). Once the study was completed, the nurse practitioner was able to fulfill the roles as expected.
The second article is written by a registered nurse and explains the role and responsibilities that is required from a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP). Greenwood (2014) states that nurse practitioners were nurses first. They examine and treat the patient as a whole. FNP’s spend a majority of their time with patients counseling and educating on disease prevention. Different states have different requirements for FNP’s so it is important to know the requirements of the state in which one will be working in. FNPs are able to perform some of the same duties that a physician would that includes: perform diagnostic tests, diagnose, perform physical exams, and treat and manage both acute and chronic conditions.
The last article is a literature review on the nurse practitioner role. There are both negative and positive concerns that have been debated in the Netherlands since 1977. The two main concerns being debated are the efficiency and the professional development of nurse practitioners. With the data that was collected, the nurse practitioners are caught up between conflicting expectations. It is later thought that the nurse practitioners autonomy may undermine that the development “towards nursing care that really benefits patients” (ter Maten-Speksnijder’ et al, 2013).
All three of these article talks about the role of nurse practitioners and how important they are in order to take care of patients. There are pros and cons that goes along with any profession that has to be researched to find better solutions or keep the one they have. In all three articles it mentions that patient’s are very satisfied with the care that given to them by their nurse practitioner.

Reference
Sangster-Gormley E, Martin-Misener R, Downe-Wamboldt B, Dicenso A. J Adv Nurs. 2011 Jun;67(6):1178-90. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05571.x. Epub

2011 Jan 24. Review.

ter Maten-Speksnijder, A., Grypdonck, M., Pool, A., Meurs, P. and van Staa, A.L. (2014), A literature review of the Dutch debate on the nurse practitioner role: efficiency vs. professional development. International Nursing Review, 61: 44–54. doi: 10.1111/inr.12071