Question

Please this discussion focuses on Nurse Practitioners.

Guidelines for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN) licensure, education, certification and education are here to stay. For this discussion:

1. Share your thoughts on one positive aspect of either the LACE or NONPF guidelines

2. Discuss the controversy kindled by that individual item (Controversy on the one you chose on question 1)

3. Discuss the controversy surrounding the naming conventions for APRNs.

Answer 1

The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF) is the only organization specifically devoted to promoting high quality nurse practitioner (NP) education at the national and international levels.

NONPF has evolved as the leading organization for NP faculty sharing the commitment of excellence in NP education. Today, the organization represents a global network of NP educators.

NONPF recognizes that NPs provide a significant amount of care and that the education of NPs must be strong, relevant and innovative. To this end, NONPF has continually provided support to educators through establishing competencies, methods of evaluation and by working with partner organizations to achieve excellence in NP education. In addition, NONPF has worked on behalf of members to review, analyze and influence policy decisions that impact NP education and practice.

Making faculty assignments and accounting for faculty workload are complicated processes for all faculty and administrators. Currently the dramatic increase in need for advanced practice nurses and the increased enrollments in nurse practitioner programs, support the critical need for transparent, equitable, and consistent workload formulas. Special issues exist when determining workload for nurse practitioner faculty. Each program/institution must create policies and procedures that account for situations specific to their setting. General guidelines can be useful for developing or refining workload specific to the institutions.

Guidelines for Determining Nurse Practitioner Faculty Workload

NONPF supports the primary assumption that nurse practitioner faculty teaching clinically-related courses must be involved in clinical practice and maintain national certification to insure faculty competency, program accreditation, and quality.
Maintaining clinical practice for certification and clinical competency should be included in workload calculations. The evaluation criteria for NP programs put forward by the National Task Force on Quality of Nurse Practitioner Education state:
Criterion I.C: Institutional support ensures that NP faculty teaching in  clinical courses maintain currency in clinical practice. It is intended that  institutions provide administrative support for faculty to practice the required clinical hours to obtain and maintain national certification. Faculty and administrators are encouraged to review the detailed criterion description and required evidence of meeting criterion in the NTF document.

NONPF also supports common assumptions related to faculty workload, such as:

1. Programs are of high quality with high faculty engagement.
2. Faculty time is precious.
3. Faculty engage across missions.
4. Faculty and staff work is honored.
5. We are responsible stewards of finite resources.
6. Quality, efficiency, and effort are valued.
7. Curricula must meet academic quality and financial responsibility.
8. Meet specific institution APT guidelines.

Additional Assumptions:

1. Transparency is important.
2. Workload varies across divisions and across a person’s career.
3. Expectations should be clear.
4. Value teaching, clinical practice, scholarship, and service.
5. Professional responsibility is expected, including institutional commitments/committees.
6. Private schools may have different expectations than public schools.
7. Faculty practice may be a separate workload area, or may be part of the service expectations.
8. Requirements for licensure, certification, and credentialing should be accounted for in workload.
9. These are guidelines for the faculty role, and the program coordinator role may be different than the faculty role.
10. Clinical courses require an unique set of expectations that are different from classroom teaching.
11. Online teaching requires additional consideration for faculty workload.
12. The best guidelines must be flexible and adaptable to special or changing circumstances. Some of these circumstances include the following:

• New faculty
• New course
• Travel
• Distance between sites
• Experience level of student
• Degree level (e.g. MSN, DNP) of student
• Experience level of preceptor
• Student problems
• Characteristics of clinical site
• Faculty role in pre- clinical requirements (e.g. CPR, immunizations, drug screen, background checks, blood borne pathogens; EHR training)
• Faculty role in clinical site development and student placement
• Variations in length of academic terms (quarters, semesters, intensives)

Roles and Responsibilities
Nursing faculty share common roles and responsibilities. Each program’s or college’s workload criteria will include roles and responsibilities related to teaching, scholarship and service. All faculty members are expected to participate in accreditation, mentoring of new faculty, curriculum development and revision, student recruitment, admissions, advisement, and retention. Often, NP faculty members have greater volume of responsibilities in these areas than do faculty not involved in NP education. This document is designed to provide guidance on faculty responsibilities specific to the advance practice nursing role. Because of the intense clinical nature of APRN education, special attention should be paid to

• faculty clinical expertise and certification matched to program concentration / specialization.
• faculty APRN licensure, certification and credentialing.
• clinical site procurement and assessment.
• student assessment and preparation for clinical site (use of EHRs, meets all requirements for clinical placement, clinical evaluation of site, and clinical evaluation of students).
• preparation of clinical site (orientation of preceptors, contractual arrangements between site and university).
• career advice to students seeking first APRN position.

Because of the dramatic increase in demand for nurse practitioners, many programs are experiencing unprecedented growth. During periods of expansion, attention needs to be paid to orienting and mentoring new faculty, rapid expansion of need for assessing and developing new clinical preceptors and clinical sites, and matching students with appropriate clinical experiences. Additional workload credit should be considered in these circumstances