Characterisitics of Advanced Practice nurses in critical care settings

Standards of care from Becker, Kaplow, Muenzen, and Hartigan 2006

  •  Clinical judgment
    •  The ACNP Synthesizes, interprets, makes decisions and recommendations, and evaluates responses on the basis of complex, sometimes conflicting, sources of data
    • identifies and prioritizes clinical problems on the basis of education, research, and experiential knowledge
    • Develops, implements, evaluates, and modifies plans of care for individual patients, patients’ families, and cohorts.
    • Prescribes medications, therapeutics, and monitoring modalities in collaboration with physicians and other members of the healthcare team as necessary.
    • Develops proactive interventions; implements/directs others to act on actual or potential clinical problems.
  • Advocacy and Moral Agency
    • Participates in problem solving to anticipate and prevent recurrences of dissatisfaction or concern among patients or patients’ families.
    • Facilitates resolution of ethical and clinical conflicts between patients or patients’ families and other health-care professionals.
    • Promotes an environment for ethical decision making and advocacy for patients.
  • Caring practices
    • Promotes a caring and supportive environment
    • Facilitates healthcare team’s development of caring practices through serving as a role model, teaching, coaching, and/or mentoring.
    • Provides patients and their families with the skills to navigate transitions along the healthcare continuum (ie, facilitates safe passage).
    • interprets and communicates needs of complex patients and their families and administrative needs to other caregivers.
  • Collaboration
    • Leads and facilitates coordination of intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to develop or revise programs focused on group or systems issues.
    • Leads and facilitates coordination of intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to develop or revise plans of care focused on issues related to patients and/or patients’ families.
    • Serves as a role model, teaches, coaches, and mentors healthcare team to understand and use resources and expertise of others.
  • Systems diversity
    • Interprets and facilitates integration of organizational mission, goals, and systems into practices related to patients’ care
    • Assesses and facilitates understanding of the impact of social, political, regulatory, and economic (eg, payors, products) forces on the delivery of care.
    • Using knowledge of the system, works with internal clients (eg, nursing staff, medical staff, other healthcare providers, administrators) and external clients (eg, institutions, sales representatives) to optimize delivery of care.
  • Response to Diversity
    •   Identifies diversity issues and facilitates awareness of these issues.
    • Serves as a role model, teacher, coach, and/or mentor for acceptance of and responsiveness to diversity.
    • Recognizedentifies clinical problems amenable to researcs and assists the healthcare team to integrate individual differences in tailoring the delivery
      Recognizes and assists the healthcare team to integrate individual differences in tailoring the delivery of care to meet the diverse needs and strengths of patients.
  • Clinical Inquiry
    •   Identifies clinical problems amenable to research.
    • Serves as a role model, teacher, coach and/or mentor of staff on the use of, implementation of, and evaluation of research findings.
    • Evaulates current and innovative practices in patients' care on the basis of evidence-based practice, research, and experiental knowledge.