Community Evolution and Organizational Representation for the DNP, Essay Example

Nurses are the largest portion of the healthcare workforce. They play an important role in ensuring the highest quality of healthcare for patients and the broader community. Nursing professional is one of the diverse professional addressing clinical, public policy and public health care. In addition, nurses have a wide range of educational credentials ranging from associate to doctor degrees including a doctor of nursing practice (DNP).  DNP program is young, but it is growing quickly. The program is focused on the practice competencies. The degree prepares the medical student to address critical skills that are needed to translate evidence-based care into practice and measure the outcome of a group of patient outcomes (De et al., 2014).

As the role of DNPs continues to diversify, some stakeholder, have begun to consider the need for organizational representation as opposed to specialist representation. Currently, only DNP and LLC are the only organization representing all doctor prepared nurses in advanced practice.  The different organization represents different classes of nurses. Personally, I believe, this will continue until the time when all nurses engaged in advanced practice will be required to have doctorate degrees.  Currently, Networking and community building through DNPs organization will continue to be crucial for the DNPs to grow as a distinct discipline within nursing. The increase in the number of nurses holding DNP will increase the number of nurses available to train additional nurses at the bachelor level, and the community will continue to grow.  The continued growths of the community will slowly propel the DNP into a position of the required contribution to significantly impact the health care delivery system (Smith et al., 2014).  Most importantly, the growth of the community of DNPs will translate to high-quality care in healthcare facilities.

Reference

De, S. H. C., Van, R. G. H., & Oosthuizen, M. J. ( 2014). Teaching and facilitation strategies for the professional socialization of student nurses: part 1: contemporary issues in nursing. South African Journal of Higher Education, 28, 6, 1861-1875.

Smith, P., Fulton, J., Irons, A., & Sanders, G. (2014). The Role of the Professional Doctorate in Developing Professional Practice in STEM Subjects.