Advanced Practice Nursing: Unification Through a Common Identity

Advanced practice nursing: A principle‐based concept analysis

“…The literature has a general consensus that advanced practice nursing is beyond basic clinical nursing practice. Advanced practice nursing includes higher clinical skill, specialization of care, depth, breadth, and expansion of knowledge, degree of data synthesis, advancement with complexity of skills and interventions acquired through graduate education, expanded theoretical and research‐based interventions, and autonomous roles with expanded boundaries and scope of practice (AANP, 2002; Bryant‐Lukosius et al, 2004; Davies & Hughes, 2002; DeBourgh, 2001; Donnelly, 2007; Fawcett, Newman, & McAllister, 2004; Gardner, Chang, & Duffield, 2007; Hamric et al, 2000; Hanson & Hamric, 2003; Hickey, Ouimette, Venegoni, 2000; Ingersoll, McIntosh, & Williams, 2000; Jamieson & Williams, 2002; Ketefian, Redman, Hanucharurnkul, Masterson, & Neves, 2001; MacDonald, Herbert, & Thibeault, 2006; Micevski, Mulcahy, Belford, & Kells, 2004; Murphy‐Ende, 2002; Mirr Jansen, & Zwygart‐Stauffacher, 2006; Spross & Heaney, 2000). Donnelly comments, “APNs provide services quite different and independent from mainstream nursing practice” (p. 4).…”

“…Betts (2007) states “Nursing is not medicine; medicine is a stable, largely epistemological ideology” (p. 454). There is consensus that advanced practice nursing has overlap, shifted boundaries, components of care, is likened to, an extension of, or medicalization of nursing practice in which there is encroachment onto the boundaries of medical practice (Boyd, 2000; Hanson & Hamric, 2003; Locsin, 2002; Lyon, 2004; MacDonald et al, 2006; Perron & Holmes, 2006; Schober, 2006; Spross & Heaney, 2000). APNs guide their practice with a nursing framework, but their role requires mastery of nursing therapeutics as well as medical therapeutics.…”

“…In contrast, ANP refers to the work , or what APNs do in the role, and includes role domains and competencies. ANP extends the traditional scope of nursing, involves highly autonomous practice, maximizes the use of nursing knowledge through the application of an expanded range of practical, theoretical, and research‐based therapeutics, and contributes to the development of the profession and discipline (Bryant‐Lukosius et al, 2004; MacDonald et al, 2006; Spross & Heaney, 2000). It would assist the evolution of the discipline of nursing if practitioners and scholars would agree on the use and definition of fundamental terms of reference such as advanced practice nursing and ANP.…”

Stillborn: Regulated midwifery in Nova Scotia

“…High maternal mortality was blamed on midwives and was used as support for making the hospital the primary delivery location (MacDonald, 2006). Until this exclusion midwifery had been practiced as a lay profession with no formal training other than experiential apprenticeships.…”

Advanced Practice Clinician Training for Neurology

“…Training programs for advanced practice nursing are far more variable as there are numerous types of programs available. Historically, education for APNs has been described as “uncoordinated and sporadic, resulting in programs that have been inconsistent in academic preparation, duration, theory base, and practice requirements” [5]. …”