Introduction
Health care professionals include individuals trained to work in health-related or physical health fields. They include physicians, therapists, and lab technicians. The nursing profession emerged in the mid-19th century, with most of the credit being given to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. An Advanced Practice (AP) includes registered nurses who have knowledge and complex decision-making skills and are competent when offering clinical services. They specialize in treating and diagnosing diseases, give advice concerning various illnesses to the general public, help society manage chronic illnesses, and engage in continuous education to stay ahead and informed on any technological issues likely to emerge in the nursing profession. Several factors drive the evolution of the nursing profession towards offering a full-service development. For instance, all healthcare services have an imperative of chronicity, where they redirect their efforts and the transformation of the educational system with adaptation to the European Higher Education Area, thus leading to confronting new services development and new competencies. The paper discusses the development of a health care profession and the role of advanced practice within the author’s area of expertise. The author of this paper is a nursing practitioner in a private hospital in the UK.
Critical Reflection on Historical Issues of the Nursing Profession
Nursing is among the youngest professions and the oldest art in human history. The profession has gone through various stages, thus forming an integral part of social movements. The nursing profession is also involved in the existing culture which shapes it (Foronda, 2020). Various trending analyses of the profession and future scenarios also help provide the basis for fair decision-making via mapping possible futures when there is the need to create preferred futures in the profession. Research also identifies that the nursing profession dates its history with the desire that accompanies people when there is the desire to keep people healthy (Penry et al., 2019). It is also accelerated by the need to keep people’s lives comfortable and give the sick people assurance to have life. Nursing is among the fastest-growing professions due to the general goals that tend to have remained for centuries and the changing needs of society.
The nursing profession has several stages in its history, including early civilization, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, and the nightingale period. During the early civilization stage, the Egyptian physicians were credited for having specialized in various diseases, including internal diseases, fractured bones, and wounds in the human body (Gonzalez, 2021). The Egyptian physicians also specialized in helping women to give birth (Midwives), who were later called nurses. The early stages of civilization also date the history of the nursing profession from the Greeks, who had maintained a firm belief in Apollo. Apollo was the name of the god responsible for healing, and they prayed to him to provide a magic cure for their illness since they firmly believed that natural causes caused diseases. The nursing profession also dates its history during the Christianity stages of development (Butler et al., 2019). When Christianity began, the nurses seemed to have formal roles that were clearly defined. It was promoted by the belief that human beings require love and care in their lives. The nursing profession was also promoted by the role of women in visiting sick people and the male giving nursing care and burying the dead, thus making the profession the most respected vocation.
Advanced nursing practitioners date their existence to the 1890s. However, nursing practitioners came into existence in the European countries in the 1960s due to the rising population in the UK. The existence of the nursing profession has caused nurses to shift from households to provide services in hospitals, schools and outpatient clinics (McKerrow et al., 2019). Advanced Nursing Profession is among the fastest-growing careers in the UK since most clinic centres require highly skilled, highly educated nurses who can act with maximum autonomy. Research shows that most nurses transitioning to the profession find themselves in an unfamiliar world where the boundaries of nursing and medicine are blurred (Mannix and Jones, 2020). Transitioning to the advanced nursing profession brings anxiety, stress and uncertainty among most ANPs. The change of responsibilities in the nursing profession can be so immense at times, thus inhibiting development. Research also identifies that in historical terms, the role of ANP is still new among most nurses in the UK due to a lack of a clear definition of the role of the nurses (Egerod et al., 2021). There is also a lack of standardization across the spectrum of ANPs and the presence of unequal training opportunities among the nurses, which makes the role of the ANP still new historically.
The role of the ANP has been widely implemented in both primary and secondary care historically. Historically, it has been identified as lacking consistency in practice, training, and regulation. Currently, the advanced nursing profession dates its history due to an emphasis on the health of the people living in the society, which also defines their role of helping sick people to recover from various illnesses. Research identifies that historically, a group of professionals need to meet some criteria for such a profession to be known as a profession which is not limited to the ANP (McKenna et al., 2020). The advanced nursing profession has evolved due to meeting some criteria, including providing a caring relationship to facilitate health and healing and providing attention to human experiences and responses to health and illness in their physical environment. Historically, the ANP has existed due to the integration of objective data accompanied by knowledge gained from an appreciation of a patient or group’s subjective experiences (Welsh and Lusher, 2022). How the nurses apply scientific knowledge when diagnosing and treating and applying critical thinking skills also define the history of the Advanced Nursing Practice in the UK.
Critical Analysis of the Skills and Knowledge by Advanced Nursing Practitioners
Various factors lead to the emergence of the nursing profession when there is the need to give full-service development to human beings. Most clinical centres need to redirect their efforts, transform the educational system to adapt to the European Higher Education Area and regulate some interventions, including the nursing prescription, which leads to the development of new services and competencies (Clays-Kulik et al., 2019). Most individuals are more concerned about the services they get from the nurses and other professionals that satisfy their basic needs (Ulrich et al., 2020). The population is also more concerned with the quality of services they get from the nursing profession, raising the need for nurses to improve their skills to serve humanity.
For an advanced to offer high-quality services to humanity, the nurse needs to get skills that lead to specialization in a particular area. The current society requires nurses to have advanced knowledge in various global healthcare centres to serve the whole population (Schwerdtle et al., 2020). Advancement in the practice of the nurses also leads to developing particular services to curb particular health demands and the needs of the people in the UK. It is, however, essential to remember that not all advanced nursing practices have the same reach, and depending on their characteristics, there is the presence of a gradient of advanced practice leading to specialization in the profession (Wakefield et al., 2021). There is a likeliness that the advanced practice services in the nursing profession need to be developed within similar professional nursing fields, leading to the development of specialization in the UK.
Nursing requires advanced practitioners to have high critical thinking skills to solve patients’ problems. A high level of critical thinking skills equips advanced nurses with the ability to make decisions faster and with a high level of creativity to enhance effects (Jiménez-Gómez et al., 2019). Critical thinking skills are essential to delivering safe, efficient, and skillful nursing intervention. Research identifies that critical thinking skills include active mental process and subtle perception, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating different types of information collected by observing, experimenting, reflecting, reasoning, and communicating with the patients (Zhang and Chen, 2021). It leads to the rise of the call of action to save humankind. Advanced nursing practitioners must develop critical thinking skills since they have diverse knowledge, which helps them handle various situations they encounter in their service to humanity.
When critical thinking skills are combined with creativity, they refine the results since nurses can find different particular solutions to various problems with creativity when there is no application of traditional interventions. Creativity is also essential in helping nurses develop new ideas quickly, improve flexibility, and create original solutions to various problems affecting the UK population (Fraher et al., 2020). It also enables the advanced nurses to act with confidence even in situations when they are under pressure and also show originality in their work. Advanced nurses need to create and implement critical thinking skills, which enable them to develop methods including cognitive skills essential in analyzing, solving various problems, and making decisions (Shirazi and Heidari, 2019). The skills are applied to sets of questions relating to the concepts to determine essential information and ideas and discard the unimportant ones. They help the advanced nurses to use the most appropriate skills when faced with different circumstances.
Critical Evaluation of Advanced Practice Competencies Within the Nursing Profession
There are various core competencies of Advanced Practice Nurses. Changes in the health care systems lead to the shifting of a significant portion of care to the home environment of various patients, where their care partners end up being responsible for caring that nurses had previously given in the acute care setting. Advanced practice nurses also bring considerable knowledge and skills to offer their services to the UK population (Gysin et al., 2019). Research identifies a high value of using advanced practice nurses in any clinical setting since it leads to vital contributions and outcome measures (Adams and Markowitz, 2018). Advanced practice nurses are also primarily essential since they improve the outcomes, including satisfaction of patients, readmissions, cost, health status, and complications.
Advanced practice nurses must develop various vital competencies, including expert coaching and guidance, shown through their expertise in knowledge. Expert coaching and guidance are also evident through the ability of the nurses to tailor evidence-based educational interventions based on the individual patient and family needs and also through the ability of the nurses to use the adult teaching principles to provide care to the patients (Bright et al., 2022). Advanced practice nurses must also demonstrate critical competency when offering consultation services (Taylor et al., 2020). It is evident when they utilize different specialities, including psychology, social work, physical work, and medicine, when there is the need to enrich ad design comprehensive teaching interventions. Research skills are among the key competencies advanced practice nurses must demonstrate when providing care for various patients within the UK (Hill et al., 2021). It is shown through their ability to act as the intervention nurse and know the goals and objectives when conducting a research study. The advanced practice nurses must deliver content, show expertise in maintaining their relationship with the patients they are conducting the study, and use evidence-based literature to impact the tailored intervention to benefit the patients.
Advanced practice nurses must demonstrate critical competencies, including clinical and professional leadership. It is evident when the advanced practice nurses interact with the managerial staff and act as role models to give positive feedback whenever required. They also need to demonstrate collaboration through partnering with other health care members to serve the patients to the satisfaction of humanity. Research shows that advanced practice nurses in the UK must show ethical decision-making skills (Boeykens and Van, 2018). It is evident when they design informed consent documents, identify potential areas for ethical concerns about the care of patients when conducting various studies, and report the patients’ concerns to the administration within the clinic. All the core competencies advanced practice nurses need are essential when conducting research within the nursing profession. Ethical decision-making skills are essential in creating an ethical environment following principles of beneficence and fidelity (Akdeniz et al., 2021). Positive evidence of collaboration affects the treatment of depression and the social work of the patients and their families.
Measuring competency in advanced practice nurses is essential since it helps to ensure that the profession has the right people to conduct clinical work. It also ensures that the nurses are equipped to help them achieve optimal performance outcomes. Key competencies are always in line with the nursing profession’s goals and objectives of the nursing profession thus ensuring that advanced practice nurses do not harm patients and improve clinical outcomes (Zumstein and Grace, 2022). Competencies in advanced practice nurses are essential in rating the skill performance of various nurses in various organizations throughout the UK and ensuring that all nurses are competent in their roles. Any advanced practice nurse needs to be competent since the competency level helps increase the confidence of patients when visiting the health centres (Gibson et al., 2020). Research identifies that crucial competency in the nursing profession should be the primary goal of all advanced practice nurses since patients deserve nothing less than getting high-quality services from the nurses treating them (Lamb et al., 2018). It is also vital since it helps the nurses identify various errors within the organization.
Conclusion
Advanced practice registered nurses includes nursing practitioners, clinical nursing specialists, and midwives who play a primary role in providing health care to patients globally. They are always at the forefront when there is a need to provide preventive care services to the general public. They are essential during times of emergencies and during times when patients require complex care and attention. They are therefore essential in serving the general public to increase access to prompt emergency care which also includes time to treatment. Advanced practise registered nurses must understand their history, which helps to wholly understand the current problems affecting humanity. Critically analyzing the history of the advanced nursing profession is also vital since it helps the advanced practice nurses fully understand the problems affecting their profession, including payments, regulation of the profession, and unity among advanced nurses. It is difficult for modern nurses to address essential issues affecting their profession without having a historical knowledge foundation. Advanced practice nurses must also critically analyze the skills required in the profession since it helps them apply them to various problems. The nurses also use the skills to evaluate any information patients represent to them, thus making them more effective in their jobs.
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