Advanced nursing practice extends and widens the confines of nursing’s scope of practice, adds to nursing knowledge, and helps the profession advance. An APRN must have earned a master’s or doctoral degree in their field of nursing practice. Certified specialists in advanced nursing practices can take on more responsibility and provide more individualized care for their patients. Similar to how the role of APRNs has changed in many other countries, the work of nurses in the community has developed dramatically over the past decade. There has been a marked increase in the overall number of people in need of medical attention, which can be traced back to various underlying changes in the social and demographic make-up of the population (Flanders, 2020). There has also been an increase in the number of people aged 45 and up who suffer from most chronic diseases. It is expected that the rising birthrate in the United States will continue to be a direct result of the rise in the number of immigrants, the vast majority of whom are of childbearing age. Second, more patients needing help are being released from hospitals earlier due to shorter patient stays because patients are being discharged quicker (Heinen et al., 2019). APRNs have been given more responsibilities because there are more cases in general, some patients need more complex care, and new immigrants from other cultures are harder to talk to.
Hispanics constitute the largest minority group in America. Nearly half of all Hispanic deaths are caused by cardiovascular disease and cancer, which is on par with the death rate for whites. Hispanics fare better than whites regarding survival from the top 10 causes of death (Diaz & Nio, 2019). Diabetes, chronic liver illness, and kidney diseases are the main exceptions to this trend, killing almost the same number of whites and Hispanics. Numerous distinct Hispanic communities face vastly different health risks. Hispanics have three times the rate of uninsured Americans compared to whites (Boen & Hummer, 2019). As a group, Hispanics in the United States are roughly 15 years younger than whites. Hispanics’ future health greatly depends on their ability to take preventative measures today. Here is a list of what advanced nurses do to improve the general public’s health.
Assessment of the patient’s medical history and previous history in both the hospital and the community is the primary function of the APRN in the context of the general population’s health (Miranda Neto et al., 2018). Interviewing strategies elicit objective and subjective data from patients and their caretakers. The information gleaned from the data will serve as a baseline for the nursing diagnosis. One of the most important aspects of making sound clinical decisions is obtaining a thorough medical history from a patient. For nearly three-quarters of the time, the information gleaned from a patient’s medical history is adequate to make a diagnosis before proceeding with a physical exam and other diagnostic procedures. When a doctor and an ARNP nurse collaborate, patient care benefits from the breadth and depth of their combined knowledge and experience. A trained nurse can help determine the problem and advise on the best course of treatment. Additionally, the nurse has a part to play in the ongoing treatment monitoring. ARNP nurses evaluate medical prescriptions and stay in close contact with prescribers to reduce pharmaceutical errors and the number of prescriptions that aren’t needed.
ARNP Nurses in the field of preventative medicine work to improve their patient’s health through tests, counseling, preventive medications, and evidence-based recommendations (Anderson, 2018). Nurses can help more people live longer and better lives by raising awareness about public health issues. Nursing professionals generally support the idea of preventive care. It’s important to note that the many methods used in preventive medicine to identify, educate, prevent, and cure disease in populations are only a small subset of what’s included in the field. Depending on their position, ARNP nurses are often involved in disease prevention efforts at the primary, secondary, and even tertiary levels. Providing people with the knowledge they need to avoid getting sick is an example of primary prevention. In this context, ARNP nurses are crucial in their educational role in preventing sickness. They disseminate knowledge and advice to communities and groups of individuals to motivate them to adopt healthier lifestyles (Heinen et al., 2019). Programs are created to reduce the number of people who become ill and the associated suffering and expenditures. Vaccination campaigns and campaigns to get people to buckle up in cars are only two examples. Focusing on primary prevention gives ARNP nurses the biggest impact for the least amount of money when helping patients get and stay healthy.
In secondary prevention, those with high-risk factors or early symptoms of the disease are screened regularly and given treatment to slow the progression of the disease and prevent it from becoming more severe. Once a patient is identified, ARNP nurses work with them to identify potential risks and develop a plan to address them (Miranda Neto et al., 2018). They do this by encouraging people to change how they act and using screening tools to find diseases early when they might be easier to treat. The most common method of prevention, known as secondary prevention, entails regular checks by an ARNP nurse to reduce the risk of having some diseases. Compared to the first two phases, tertiary prevention is slightly different. Diseased patients are the primary target of this method of treatment. Helping patients adhere to a care plan and making other required behavioral adjustments to improve their condition falls under the purview of ARNP nurses at this stage of treatment. Since the first two methods didn’t work, the third phase focuses on taking steps to lessen the effects of the fallout and prevent it from happening again.
Using their community involvement and broad knowledge of the population, ARNP nurses combine their clinical understandings of how members of the public deal with health and illness. They teach health planners and policymakers about the lived experiences of sickness among the community’s many and varied groups, many of which are marginalized or at risk. They also facilitate community members’ sharing of their struggles and hopes. Nurses with ARNP certification have completed extensive training in various intervention strategies, including those that benefit the entire population, the family, and the individual patient (Heinen et al., 2019). Registered nurse practitioners (ARNPs) learn to apply the knowledge they’ve gained in the health and social sciences to the care they provide to patients and communities through various targeted interventions, programs, and campaigns, as well as through advocacy on behalf of those groups. In either case, ARNP nurses are integral to the interdisciplinary efforts that back up the cornerstones of public health practice: assessment, quality assurance, and policy formulation. The ARNP nurses can target interventions and strategies at multiple tiers, and they should be doing so to increase the likelihood of achieving the desired outcomes. Those documents may contain strategies for a whole town, a single family, or even just one person. ARNP nurses are responsible for preventing illness, injury, and disability, promoting health, and maintaining the health of the population as a whole.
In conclusion, ARNP nurses are an essential bridge between population-level health statistics and the lived experience of individuals with sickness. It’s because ARNP nurses are well-versed in both epidemiology and clinical practice. This understanding is then used to help the wider public. A good example of this would be keeping a close check on the prevalence of various diseases in the community. Detecting trends that may be harmful to the public and then formulating, coordinating, and implementing solutions to these problems is what the ARNP nurses are qualified to do everywhere. ARNP nurses help set up systems that keep track of important health status indicators like environmental illness, immunization levels, newborn mortality rates, and the spread of diseases. These systems help find problems that risk the general population’s health.
Reference
Anderson, C. (2018). Exploring the role of advanced nurse practitioners in leadership. Nursing Standard.
Boen, C. E., & Hummer, R. A. (2019). Longer—but harder—lives?: The Hispanic health paradox and the social determinants of racial, ethnic, and immigrant–native health disparities from midlife through late life. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 60(4), 434-45
Diaz, C. J., & Niño, M. (2019). Familism and the Hispanic health advantage: the role of immigrant status. Journal of health and social behavior, 60(3), 274-290.
Flanders, K. (2020). Biography: Karen Flanders, MSN, ARNP, CBN.
Heinen, M., van Oostveen, C., Peters, J., Vermeulen, H., & Huis, A. (2019). An integrative review of leadership competencies and attributes in advanced nursing practice. Journal of advanced nursing, 75(11), 2378-2392.
Miranda Neto, M. V. D., Rewa, T., Leonello, V. M., & Oliveira, M. A. D. C. (2018). Advanced practice nursing: a possibility for Primary Health Care?. Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, 71, 716-721.
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